Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world's first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant - using a windpipe made with the patient's own stem cells.

The groundbreaking technology also means for the first time tissue transplants can be carried out without the need for anti-rejection drugs.

Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old Colombian mother-of-two is in perfect health after the procedue carried out five months ago, The Lancet reports.

She needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis.

The disease had damaged her airways.

 

Scientists from Bristol helped grow the cells for the transplant and the European team believes such tailor-made organs could become the norm.

To make the new airway, the doctors took a donor windpipe, or trachea, from a patient who had recently died.

Then they used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen.

This gave them a structure to repopulate with cells from Ms Castillo herself, which could then be used in an operation to repair her damaged left bronchus - a branch of the windpipe.