First transplant of trachea without immunosuppression

• April 19, 2024

TO Claudia Castillo , 30 years of age lacked air. A tuberculosis He damaged his trachea in a severe way, besides his left lung was collapsed. She was so short of breath that she could not play with her children, or talk more than 4 words, or climb the stairs to her house. Various treatments failed forcing her to spend long periods in the hospital for severe infections.

Now Claudia will go down in history as the first person in the world, to whom a trachea transplant successfully, and also without immunosuppression (negative reaction of the immune system), as published by the journal The Lancet.

In the operation, specialists from the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, ​​of the Polytechnic of Milan, of the universities of Bristol and Padua. Paolo Macchirini , responsible for the Service of Thoracic Surgery of the Clinic, made the transplant to Claudia in June 2011.

To get your immune system accept the organ without the need to take immunosuppressive medication, the researchers resorted to "tissue engineering". The result: a hybrid vitreous between donor and patient.

The Spanish newspaper, El País, in its electronic version explains that the trachea donor was a 51-year-old man, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The extracted part of the respiratory system was washed 25 times with enzymatic detergent to deprive it of all its active immune cells. After being reduced to a tubular structure free of antigens, it was sent to the University of Milan, where the researchers "bathed" it in a culture with respiratory epithelial cells of the nose, and hip stem cells of the same Claudia.

For researchers, getting the patient's body to accept an organ without the need for immunosuppressants is a great achievement. Keeping the immune system at bay with medication causes collateral damage that can ultimately compromise your health. "This system could be applied to other tubular organs, such as the colon or esophagus," explains Macchirini.

The Hospital Clinic team already has two patients on the waiting list: 2 women with tracheal cancer: one German woman aged 42 and the other one from Alabama (United States)