The first child to whom American surgeons implanted a trachea grown in a laboratory in April 2013, reports the New York Times. The girl would have turned three in August.
Hannah Warren was born in South Korea without a trachea (her mother is Korean and her father is Canadian). She had to be artificially fed, she couldn’t learn to speak. Specialists at Children’s Hospital of Illinois decided to have an artificial tracheal implantation. It was performed on April 9, when the girl was 2,5 years old.
She was implanted with a trachea made of artificial fibers, on which bone marrow stem cells collected from the girl were placed. Cultivated on an appropriate medium in a bioreactor, they transformed into tracheal cells, forming a new organ. This was done by prof. Paolo Macchiarinim from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden), who has been specializing in the cultivation of tracheas in the laboratory for several years.
The operation was performed by a pediatric surgeon, Dr. Mark J. Holterman, whom the girl’s father, Young-Mi Warren, met by chance while he was in South Korea. It was the sixth artificial tracheal transplant in the world and the first in the USA.
However, there were complications. The esophagus did not heal, and a month later the doctors had to perform another operation. “There were then further complications that were beyond control and Hannah Warren died,” said Dr. Holterman.
The specialist emphasized that the reason for the complications was not the transplanted trachea. Due to a congenital defect, the girl had weak tissues, which made it difficult to heal after the transplant. He admitted that she was not the best candidate for such an operation.
The Children’s Hospital of Illinois is unlikely to abandon further such transplants. Dr. Holterman said the hospital intends to specialize in the transplantation of tissues and organs grown in the laboratory.
Hannah Warren is the second fatal case of death after an artificial tracheal transplant. In November 2011, Christopher Lyles died in a hospital in Baltimore. He was the second man in the world who had been transplanted with a trachea previously grown in a laboratory from his own cells. The procedure was performed at the Karolinska Institute near Stockholm.
The man had cancer of the trachea. The tumor was already so large that it could not be removed. His entire trachea was cut out and a new one, developed by prof. Paolo Macchiarini. Lyles died at the age of only 30. The cause of his death was not specified. (PAP)
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