Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world's first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant - using a windpipe made with the patient's own stem cells.
The operation took place at a Barcelona hospital on a Colombian woman whose life was severely limited by a collapsed lung.
Scientists from England, Italy and Spain worked on the project.
The BBC reports the technology means that tissue transplants can be carried out without the need for anti-rejection drugs.
The Lancet reports the patient, Claudia Castillo, 30, a mother of two, is in perfect health five months on.
She needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis. Her airways had been damaged by the disease.
Scientists from Bristol helped grow the cells for the transplant and the European team believes such tailor-made organs could become the norm.
Surgery details
To make the new airway, the doctors took a donor windpipe, or trachea, from a patient who had recently died.
Then they used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen.
This gave them a structure to repopulate with cells from Ms Castillo herself, which could then be used in an operation to repair her damaged left bronchus - a branch of the windpipe.
By using Ms Castillo's own cells the doctors were able to trick her body into thinking the donated trachea was part of it, thus avoiding rejection.
Two types of cell were taken from Ms Castillo: cells lining her windpipe, and adult stem cells - very immature cells from the bone marrow - which could be encouraged to grow into the cells that normally surround the windpipe.
After four days of growth in the lab in a special rotating bioreactor, the newly-coated donor windpipe was ready to be transplanted into Ms Castillo.
Professor Paolo Macchiarini of the Hospital ClÃnic of Barcelona, Spain, carried out the operation in June.
Four days after transplantation the hybrid windpipe was almost indistinguishable from adjacent normal airways. After a month, a biopsy of the site proved that the transplant had developed its own blood supply.
With no signs of rejection four months on, Professor Macchiarini says the future chance of rejection is practically zero.
Between 50,000 and 60,000 people are diagnosed with cancer of the larynx each year in Europe. Scientists say about half them may be suitable candidates for tissue engineering transplants.
