Surgeons implant first wholly lab-grown organ

A 36-YEAR-old man is recovering after surgeons implanted the world’s first wholly lab-grown organ into his body.

The synthetic trachea, or windpipe, was created by seeding the patient’s own stem cells onto an artificial “scaffold”.

British scientists helped design and built the structure, a replica of the man’s original windpipe. Windpipes have been grown from stem cells before, but only using the collagen “skeletons” of donated tracheas.