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Bioartificial organs may ease need for donors

Trachea transplant presages a new era

By Karen Weintraub

 |  Globe Correspondent  

  January 16, 2012

Christopher Lyles flew home to Baltimore last week, two months after becoming the second patient ever to receive an artificial trachea, made of a plastic scaffold seeded with his own cells. The need for artificial tracheas is small but researchers hope to be able to use the same basic technique to manufacture other “bioartificial’’ organs. Harvard Bioscience Inc., the Holliston-based company that made Lyles’ new trachea, anticipates that the bioartificial-organ transplant industry will eventually top $1 billion a year.

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