New wombs, grown from stem cells could be implanted to cure female infertility within the next 10 years, according to a Swedish transplant pioneer’s opinion, published in Telegraph.
Professor Mats Brannsrom managed to perform the world’s first womb transplant back in 2014. The procedure allowed a Swedish woman to give a birth to a healthy child.
Five more successful procedures have occurred since then.
Professor Brannstrom emphasized during his speech at a recent conference that the future of this methodology lies in bio-engineering, which will eliminate some significant risks of the operation.
Nowadays women have to take strong immune-suppressant drugs to prevent the rejection of the newly-implanted womb, provided by the donor.
If, however, the womb tissue can be grown from the patient’s stem cells, there is no longer the need to take immune-suppressant drugs, and, therefore less significant risks involved.
Womb transplanting is a procedure can address absolute uterine factor infertility (AUFI) which occurs a when faulty or absent uterus does not allow an embryo to implant. Approximately 12,000 women in Britain have been diagnosed with AUFI.
“This is a perfect example of personalised medicine, and the direction the industry is going to solve unique problems,” – Scott Wolf of Grace Century said.
He also added: “Stem cells used in such procedures were first used in heart transplants where, by coating the donor organ in the patients own cells, the body it tricked into thinking the transplanted organ is it’s own. The major risk in transplants is in body rejection and side effects caused by powerful anti-rejection drugs.”
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