Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world's first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant  using a windpipe made with the patient's own stem cells. The groundbreaking technology also means for the first time tissue transplants can be carried out without the need for anti-rejection drugs. Five months on the patient, 30-year-old mother-of-two Claudia Castillo, is in perfect health, The Lancet reports.

She needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis, the disease had damaged her airways. Scientists from Bristol helped grow the cells for the transplant and the European team believes such tailor-made organs could become the norm. To make the new airway, the doctors took a donor windpipe, or trachea, from a patient who had recently died. Then they used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen. This gave them a structure to repopulate with cells from Ms Castillo herself, which could then be used in an operation to repair her damaged left bronchus - a branch of the windpipe.

By using Ms Castillo's own cells the doctors were able to trick her body into thinking the donated trachea was part of it, thus avoiding rejection.