At this moment, there are over 120,000 patients waiting for organs for transplantation in the United States to have a second chance at life.
Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology, a Boston-based company that is developing synthetic tracheas, plans to continue developing more organs, according to MIT Technology Review.
The tracheas are manufactured using the patient's stem cells, which are taken from the bone marrow. The cells are grown on a scaffold made of fibers about one hundredth the width of a human hair, which are then used to create a tube that is customized to fit each patient.
HART is testing this new technique in Russia. It aims to continue testing in the European Union later this year, and eventually in the United States.
HART developed artificial tracheas in research laboratories, and plans to move the project to a production facility. In 2008, HART technology enabled for the first time the human transplantation of regenerative airways, and the company's current research has been applied during surgery four times so far.
The project could one day lead to the creation of other synthetic organs, such as kidneys and heart valves, according to MIT Technology Review.
