Mexican, American and Swiss Scientists Construct Vaginas, Nasal Cartilage With Human Cells

Two studies released in The Lancet on Thursday revealed that American, Mexican and Swiss scientists can grow reproductive organs and nasal cartilage in a laboratory using human cells, according to CNN.

Although scientifically engineering body parts is nothing entirely new, the scientists have discovered a way to make the organs adapt naturally to the person's body in terms of growth.

Ivan Martin, a professor of tissue engineering at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland and co-author of the nasal cartilage study, said the recent development of these organs are more complex than the previous ones scientists have engineered.

"This is a move forward to even more challenging [organs]," Martin said. "All these incremental steps finally have demonstrated that it is possible to engineer tissue that can help patients."

In the past, tissue engineering was used to repair burned skin or muscle short off during an accident or a dysfunctional bladder, CNN reported.

According to one of the studies, a group of four teenage girls had been born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, a rare condition where girls are born without a uterus or with a deformed one. Girls with the condition can also have an absent or ill-formed vagina.

Scientist must take swatches of muscle and tissue from the patients as well as extract cells after mirroring the dimensions of the patients' missing organs to create a 3-D scaffold, CNN reported. The cells are spread across the surface of the scaffolds and are left to grow for a weeks outside of the body. The scaffolds allow new organs to grow as it becomes absorbed with growing cells. Once the complicated task is complete, a full functioning organ has emerged.

Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and lead author of the vaginal organ study, said this process isn't like previous medical fixes.

"This is not like a defective organ that you augment or something you put in between two places. We had to create the organ. We put it in de novo (anew)," Atala said. "The body recognizes the organ as its own. And just like with normal organs, these organs also grow with [the patients]."