Lab Grown Vaginas Successfully Implanted into Teen Girls

Lab grown vaginas have been successfully implanted in four teenage girls who suffered from a genetic condition that had left them without functioning versions of the organs, according to a new study.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal The Lancet, details how researcher were able to successfully grow functioning organs from cells harvested from four volunteer patients.

The patients, four teenage girls ranging from 13 to 18 years old, were all born with a rare genetic condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome. This condition left each girl with an under-developed vagina, or without one entirely, since birth.

In an attempt to give these girls functioning vaginas, researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard plastic surgery residency program harvested muscle cells and epithelial cells from each volunteer.These cells were then used by the researchers to grow vaginal tissue in the lab, attaching the growing tissue to a biodegradable "scaffold" that served as a kind of guide for the growth of the complex organs.

A study published last February details a similar procedure, where researchers were able to rebuild an entire human lung -- arguably one of the most complex organs in the human body --in a lab using cellular scaffolding.

These latest lab-built organs, however, are the first to successfully implanted in human beings, according to the study. Contamination concerns associated with lab-grown organs have been well documented in the past, as a contaminated organ is likely to be rejects by a patient's body even if the organ is made from his or her own cells.

Still, according to the study, the implantation of these custom-built vaginas appears to a grand success, as a three year follow-up of the patients has revealed that the organs are functioning naturally.

The study was published in The Lancet on April 11.