New boost for regenerative medicine as lab-grown vaginas a success
Regenerative medicine's potential shown by the growing in a lab of sex organs for women with birth defect, who now lead normal sex lives
Four young women born with abnormal or missing vaginas were implanted with lab-grown versions made from their own cells, the latest astonishing success in creating replacement organs that have so far included tracheas, bladders and urethras.
The breakthrough was reported yesterday in the medical journal The Lancet, alongside news that surgeons in Switzerland had carried out the first operations to repair cancer-ravaged noses using supplementary tissue grown from the patient's own cartilage cells.
However, the fact that sets of female sexual organs had been grown in a laboratory and successfully transplanted perhaps better demonstrates the potential of regenerative medicine.
Follow-up tests show the new vaginas are indistinguishable from the women's own tissue and have grown in size as the young women, who got the implants as teenagers, matured.
All four of the women are now sexually active and report normal vaginal function. Two of the four, who were born with a working uterus but no vagina, now menstruate normally.
It is not yet clear whether these women can bear children, but the fact that they are menstruating suggests their ovaries are working, so it may be possible, said Dr Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre's Institute for Regenerative Medicine in the US state of North Carolina. In prior studies, Atala's team used the approach to make replacement bladders and urethras in young boys.
Atala said the pilot study conducted with colleagues in Mexico was the first to show that vaginal organs custom-built in the lab using patients' own cells could be successfully used in humans.