From the New York Times Online:
The Bristol University statement said a segment of trachea, roughly three inches long, was taken from a 51-year-old donor who had died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Using a new technique developed in Padua University, the trachea was stripped of its donor’s cells over a six-week period “so that no donor cells remained,” the statement said.
At the same time, at Bristol University, stem cells removed from Ms. Castillo’s bone marrow, were grown into “a large population” and used to “seed” the donated windpipe using a new technique developed in Milan to incubate cells.
Can you only imagine what breakthroughs could have come about if the Bush administration wasn’t living in the dark ages? Although still needing to rely on 3rd-party donor tissue is a bit of a limitation. I wonder if they will find a way to grow organ tissue without the need for a destructive harvest of a host organ.