Five children receive new ears grown from their own cells

Scientists have made a breakthrough in regenerative medicine after they successfully grew a perfectly compatible ear in a lab and grafted it onto a patient.

Five children have received new ears through the process – a world's first – which uses their own cells combined with a 3D-printed biodegradable mould.

The children, aged between six and nine years, who underwent the experimental surgery were all born with a defect in one ear known as microtia, a condition in which the external ear is small and underdeveloped.

Two-and-a-half years ago, the first child to undergo the procedure showed no signs. The body had rejected or accidentally absorbed the new cells, the  team who developed the procedure wrote when they published their findings in the journal.

The scientists created reversed 3D-printed replicas of the children’s normal ears and used the replicas to make biodegradable moulds full of tiny holes.

The next step involved the collection of the cartilage cells called chondrocytes from the children’s deformed ears which were used to grow ear-shaped cartilage with the moulds in a lab.

After three months, the ears grown in the lab were grafted on the children as the cartilage cells begin to grow in the shape of the mould, and the mould itself begins to break down.

“It’s a very exciting approach,” said a reconstructive plastic surgeon.

“They’ve shown that it is possible to get close to restoring the ear structure.”
 
The recipients of the new ears will now be monitored by the scientists for the next five years to evaluate the success of the procedure – whether the ears remain intact after the moulded scaffold has completely broken down – and working to refine the procedure in the hope of producing increasingly natural-looking ears.

The surgery was reportedly inspired by the so-called 'earmouse', a lab mouse which appeared to have a human ear growing on its back.

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Research gives hope for people with facial, head deformities

A recent research substantiates that calcium plays a major role in regulating the cells that are responsible for bone growth and the finding could affect treatment for people with head and facial deformities.

Especially when the conditions is caused by too much collagen deposition, such as fibrosis and excessive scarring, as well as diseases of too little bone growth, such as Treacher Collins Syndrome (TCS). 

The finding by Michael Rape and his team at the University of California, came from study of the signals that tell undifferentiated stem cells in the very early embryo to mature into bone cells.

In the craniofacial disorder TCS, for instance, the embryo does not form a structure called the neural crest, from which the jaws, inner ear and numerous other bones in the head and face develop.

As a result, people like Francis Smith, a 41-year-old researcher, who visited Rape, required dozens of surgeries during childhood to reconstruct the face, implant hearing aids and even reconstruct the trachea to breathe normally.

The researchers hope that basic research to pinpoint the key signals that trigger proper bone growth can help those like Smith avoid such painful surgeries.

One option could be the implantation of a biodegradable matrix seeded with bone cells called chondrocytes, which would then be stimulated to release collagen, the blueprint for bone growth.

The new findings suggest that stimulating collagen release with calcium would also trigger proper bone growth.

"You would basically add calcium to cells on those support structures, which is fairly easy, and motivate chondrocytes to secrete the collagen that is needed to build a bone structure on top of that support would be exciting but it is very much in the future.

Nevertheless, this might become a possibility the more we understand about how cells make their decisions," Rape said.

The finding also explained how messing with the body's calcium levels during pregnancy can cause facial deformities such as those associated with fetal alcohol syndrome.

The findings were published in the journal Cell.

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