Researchers treat ear defect by growing implants from cells
While scientists have been working on growing organs and body parts like ears for some time, researchers in China have taken it one important step further. They've grown new ears for five children with microtia -- an ear defect that results in small, underdeveloped ears and often affects hearing -- grafted them onto the children and continued to observe the development for over two years. The work is important because it's the first study of its kind and shows that these sorts of methods stand to be a viable option going forward. First, the scientists built scaffolds based on the children's healthy ears using CT scanning and 3D printing . Those scaffolds were then seeded with cells from the children's underdeveloped, microtia ears and cultured for three months. The team then implanted the ears in the five patients, who have been continuously monitored ever since. Now, the researchers have over two years of follow-up data and the results are promising. None of the c...