Doctors have discovered a way to regrow ears and noses with stem cells taken from a person's fat, the BBC reported.
The procedure begins by extracting a patient's fat. Stem cells from the fat are then submerged into a chemical solution in a laboratory, turning them into cartilage that can later be used to reconstruct an organ, the BBC reported.
Doctors from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, who developed the technique, hope the procedure can be used to help children with microtia, a condition where the ear can grow deformed, or not grow at all.
Though the experiment is in its early stages, it could one day be "transformative." News of the technique was published in the journal Nanomedicine.
"It is such an exciting prospect with regard to the future treatment of these patients and many more," said Neil Bulstrode, a consultant plastic surgeon at the hospital, according to The Telegraph.
Current treatments for microtia involve surgery where cartilage is extracted from the child's ribs, which does not grow back and leaves permanent chest scars. Doctors then mold the cartilage into the shape of an ear, which is then implanted into the child, the BBC reported.
With the new technique, doctors take a "scaffold" resembling an ear and dip it into the stem cells. The chemicals coach the stem cells to turn into cartilage around the scaffold, which is then implanted.
"It would be the Holy Grail to do this procedure through a single surgery, so decreasing enormously the stress for the children and having a structure that hopefully will be growing as the child grows," Dr. Patrizia Farretti, who co-researched the technique, told the BBC.
However, doctors say their findings have to be tested for human use.
"This is just step one, we have just shown proof of principle that cartilage can be made from children stem cells on a clinically approved biomaterial, but we haven't yet made a complete ear with a related material that is biodegradable, but I am hopeful we will in the not too distant future," Ferretti said, according to The Telegraph.
