A British businessman who lost his nose to skin cancer is having a new one grown in his arm using stem cells, in a pioneering procedure.
Experts at University College London say the new nose will look exactly the same as the man’s original one, and hope it will even have a sense of smell.
The trial marks the first time a full nose has been grown from scratch, and could in future be used as a therapy for patients such as soldiers and car crash victims, the Daily Mail reported.
The first stage of the process was to create a glass mould of the unnamed man’s nose, and to spray it with a honeycomb-like material to form a biological scaffold for new cells to attach themselves to.
Once the scaffold had been built, the glass mould was removed and the biological frame was coated with millions of stem cells which can be coaxed into forming cartilage using chemicals.
At the same time, researchers inserted a small balloon beneath the surface of the man’s arm and gradually inflated it to stretch the skin, making it loose enough to accommodate the new nose.
Two months ago, the framework bearing the stem cells was inserted under the skin in place of the balloon, and now resides in the man’s arm where it is growing new networks of nerves, blood vessels and skin.