After 4 years of going from consultation to consultation, Claudia Castillo finally found a solution to her respiratory problems.
The young Colombian woman suffered from a cough that took a long time to be diagnosed as tuberculosis. She arrived at Hospital Clínic of Barcelona with complications and there, she met Professor Paolo Macchiarini Head of the Thoracic Surgery Department, who had led the international team that made possible the first trachea transplant and the first tissue transplant without immunosuppression. She underwent an operation on the upper part of the trachea but nothing could be done to repair the blockage in the left lung. The infection had led to a severe collapse just before the branch of the trachea and this obstruction prevented air from reaching the lung. The only treatment option at the time involved removing the affected lung. As the young mother of two children, removing the lung would have considerably reduced quality of life for Claudia Castillo. In March 2008, her situation worsened to the point where she was unable to carry out domestic chores or look after her children, so intervention became urgent. In June, after obtaining authorization from the ethics committee of Hospital Clínic of Barcelona and from the Catalan Transplant Organization (OCATT), the first trachea transplant and the first tissue transplant of any kind without immunosuppression took place.
The study, which will be published online on Wednesday by the journal The Lancet , with Professor Paolo Macchiarini as the principal author, together with his colleagues Dr. Philip Jungebluth, Dr. Tetsuhiko Go and Dr. Jaume Martorell, presents the details of this transplant - the first treatment alternative for treating the collapsed trachea that the patient was suffering from. The technique consists of depleting the trachea to be transplanted of the donor's cells and repopulating it with cells from the recipient before the operation. Thus, thanks to tissue bioengineering, the donor trachea becomes a hybrid that the recipient's body identifies as its own, thereby making immunosuppression unnecessary. The transplant and most of the processes involved were carried out at Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, but this would have been impossible without the collaboration of the University of Bristol (UK), the University of Padua (Italy) and the University of Milan (Italy). The prior basic research was led by Professor Paolo Macchiarini.