Cell Engineering Reconstructs Noses

New advances in tissue cell engineering had led to scientists developing a new way to reconstruct the noses of people who have suffered from serious injury or disease. Five patients have had their noses successfully reconstructed using lab-grown nasal cartilage, according a new study detailing the results of the procedures.

The nose is a very difficult thing to repair. The cartilage that lines the nostrils of the nose supports the entire structure and shape of the nose, and without it, the nose tends to lose its shape, and nasal function is severely inhibited.

In many cases of skin cancer surgery, doctors find themselves force to cut away sections of the cartilage in order to remove epidermal tumors from the nose. This severely damages the nose, and often surgeons will use cartilage from the patient's ear or ribs in order to rebuild the organ. Even then, as only a minimal amount of cartilage can be taken, rebuilt noses often lack the aesthetic appeal they had prior to damage and disease.

Now, according to a study recently published in The Lancet, scientists have successfully rebuilt five noses to a semblance of their prior shape not with harvested cartilage, but with cartilage grown in a lab.
Researcher took cartilage cells from biopsies taken from five patients who suffered from severely malformed noses following skin cancer surgery.

In the first ever application of this technique in humans, Swiss scientists were able to grow new cartilage tissue from the harvested cells over the course of a single month. This tissue was grown entirely from each patients' respective cells in a tightly controlled environment to reduce the chances of rejection.

The new cartilage was then used to rebuild each patient's nose to semblance of how it originally looked prior to cancer or surgery -- with the exception of skin graft marring.

In a one year follow-up, no patients reported rejection of the cartilage and were happy with their appearance and ability to breath.
This success, alongside a similar study which details the successful implantation of four lab-grown vaginas in patients in need of functioning versions of the organ, show that tissue cell engineering is on it's way to being proved safe enough for life-changing use among the general public.

The study was published in The Lancet on April 11.

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