Girl, new windpipe share same cells
Lab-grown organ implanted into 2-year-old
CHICAGO – A 2-year-old girl born without a windpipe now has a new one grown from her own stem cells, the youngest patient in the world to benefit from the experimental treatment.
Hannah Warren has been unable to breathe, eat, drink or swallow on her own since she was born in South Korea in 2010. Until the operation at a central Illinois hospital, she had spent her entire life in a hospital in Seoul. Doctors there told her parents there was no hope and they expected her to die.
The stem cells came from Hannah’s bone marrow, extracted with a special needle inserted into her hip bone. They were seeded in a lab onto a plastic scaffold, where it took less than a week for them to multiply and create a new windpipe.
About the size of a 3-inch tube of penne pasta, it was implanted April 9 in a nine-hour procedure.
Early signs indicate the windpipe is working, Hannah’s doctors announced Tuesday, although she is still on a ventilator. They believe she will eventually be able to live at home and lead a normal life.
“We feel like she’s reborn,” said Hannah’s father, Darryl Warren.
“They hope that she can do everything that a normal child can do, but it’s going to take time. This is a brand-new road that all of us are on,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is her only chance, but she’s got a fantastic one and an unbelievable one.”
Warren choked up and his wife, Lee Young-mi, was teary-eyed at a hospital news conference Tuesday. Hannah did not attend because she is still recovering from the surgery. She developed an infection after the operation but now is acting like a healthy 2-year-old, her doctors said.
Warren said he hopes the family can bring Hannah home for the first time in a month or so. Hannah turns 3 in August.
“It’s going to be amazing for us to finally be together as a family of four,” he said. The couple have an older daughter.
Only about one in 50,000 children worldwide are born with the windpipe defect. The stem-cell technique has been used to make other body parts besides windpipes and holds promise for treating other birth defects and childhood diseases, her doctors said.
Scientists hope to eventually use the method to create solid organs, including kidneys and livers, said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest University’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He said the operation on Hannah Warren “is really showing that the technique is workable.”
Hannah outlived doctors’ expectations and has thrived despite the grim prognosis and other abnormalities including an undeveloped voice box that prevented her from speaking. Now that she has a windpipe and can breathe more normally, doctors expect the larynx to grow and function normally. She will work with speech therapists to help her learn to talk.
Holterman said Hannah will likely need a new windpipe in about five years, as she grows.
She breathes with help from a ventilator but no longer has a tube in her mouth that she’d lived with since shortly after birth, Holterman said. She’s not yet able to eat normally, but doctors let her have her first taste ever of food – a few licks on a lollipop. Her father said she already has discriminating taste and prefers chocolate Korean lollipops to the American kind.
“I asked her, ‘Is it good?’ ” he said, “and she immediately nodded her head.”