Surgeon Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical
Center used lab-grown urethras to treat patients with damaged
urinary tracts. Five boys aged 10 to 14 were involved in the
study and it took place at the Federico Gomez Children’s
Hospital in Mexico City. Basically, Atala took each patient’s
bladder cells and grew the cells on a scaffold. After about four
to seven weeks, the cells grew into an ideal structure on the
mesh-like tube and soon enough, the cells were ready for
implantation. At that point, the damaged tissue was removed and
surgically replaced with the regenerative tissue custom-made for
each patient. The urethra function in the male patients returned
to normal and it only took three months. Even six years in, the
tissue appeared to be working normally. Currently, treatment for
damaged urethras involves skin grafts – but the failure rate of
skin grafts is about 50 percent.