Regenerative Medicine Is On A Roll

First lab-grown vaginas, now lab-grown noses:

The biomedicine team at the University of Basel has reported the first ever successful nose reconstruction surgery using cartilage grown in the laboratory. The team took cells from five patients’ nasal septums and then grew the cells on a collagen scaffold. The engineered cartilage was then shaped and implanted. The patients were all aged between 76 and 88 and had all lost significant tissue in surgery for skin cancer. … A year after the reconstructive surgery, all five patients said they were satisfied with their ability to breathe and the cosmetic appearance of their nose.

Victoria Turk notes that while the method isn’t coming soon to an operating theater near you, it’s still exciting:

Unfortunately, it’s still a very specialist procedure, which means patient satisfaction isn’t the only factor to consider. The authors wrote in their discussion, “One important question to be addressed in future studies is the cost-effectiveness of a cell-based treatment when compared with the harvest of autologous native tissues,” and added that engineering tissue is a high-cost process.

Nevertheless, it’s a significant breakthrough that has obvious implications outside of this specific nasal surgery. … Suddenly, growing personalised organs from our own cells doesn’t seem quite so futuristic. Now we’ve got vaginas and noses down, you can count on scientists to be working on everything in between. Next step: functioning replacement organs-in-a-box.

Meanwhile, as an addendum to the vaginal-implant breakthrough, Kat Stoeffel interviewed a woman who might get one:

When did you find out you didn’t have a vagina?

I was diagnosed when I was 16 years old because I hadn’t gotten my period but the rest of my body was fully developed. My pediatrician didn’t know what was going on and sent me to a radiologist so I could get an MRI. They scanned and realized I missing my uterus, and through a gynecological exam, also missing the vaginal canal. From there I was sent to an MRKH specialist.

One of the reasons MRKHS gets sensationalized in the news, I think, is that we use the word “vagina” so loosely that the uninitiated can only imagine a Barbie blank space.

That’s the thing. MRKH is basically a genetic mutation, and the genes responsible for external sex organs and internal one are different. So the external ones develop completely normally, everything’s fine and functions the right way, that mutation causes the absence of the internal sex organs. It’s important to know that MRKH can present itself in many different ways, actually. There are some cases where women are actually born with a vaginal canal but no uterus, some women have skeletal issues or kidney problems.