More Adult Stem-Cell Success

Today, the BBC has some good news to report in the field of adult stem-cell research. A woman in Spain has successfully received a new windpipe after doctors coated the donated trachea with cells made from the patient’s own body:

Five months on, the patient, thirty-year-old mother-of-two Claudia Castillo, is in perfect health, The Lancet reports.

To make the new airway, the doctors took a donor windpipe, or trachea, from a patient who had recently died.

Then they used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen.

This gave them a structure to repopulate with cells from Ms. Castillo herself, which could then be used in an operation to repair her damaged left bronchus—a branch of the windpipe.

Let’s hope these sort of advances in adult stem-cell research continue to get media attention, despite the politicized and popular claim that only embryo-destructive research shows promise. For more information on the political history of stem cells, check out our November issue’s essay by Joseph Bottum and Ryan T. Anderson.