02 March 2014

BBC: Great Ormond Street doctors aim to grow ears from fat

Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London are aiming to reconstruct people's faces with stem cells taken from their fat.

The team has grown cartilage in the laboratory and believe it could be used to rebuild ears and noses.

They say the technique, published in the journal Nanomedicine, could revolutionise care.

Experts said there was some way to go, but it had the potential to be "transformative".

The doctors want to treat conditions like microtia, that results in the ear failing to develop properly and can be missing or malformed.

At the moment, children have cartilage taken from their ribs, which is then delicately sculpted by surgeons to resemble an ear and implanted into the child.

It requires multiple operations, leaves permanent scarring on the chest and the rib cartilage never recovers.

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