Last week, researchers in Finland announced that they had replaced a patient’s jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen. The researchers isolated the stem cells from the patient’s fat and attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it in the patient’s abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels. The resulting block of bone was then transplanted into the patient’s head, and the patient is recovering more quickly than he would have if he had received a bone graft from his leg.

This research might one day lead to patients being able to transplant entire organs to themselves. Instead of waiting on a transplant list, with no guarantee that a compatible organ will ever become available, the patient’s stem cells could be cultivated from their own fatty tissue and prompted to grow into a liver or kidney. This healthy new organ could then be swapped out for the diseased/malfunctioning organ, and the patient could return to a normal life, without the need for anti-rejection drugs. A diabetic could grow a new pancreas, eliminating the need to inject himself with insulin and test his blood sugar levels several times per day. While much more research needs to be done for these scenarios to even become plausible, research such as that done by these Finnish researchers is bringing that reality ever closer.

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