GREY'S ANATOMY—Being a news-gathering entity for an industry that would never survive without a constant supply of fresh vaginas, we were intrigued to learn that there are a few unfortunate women out there suffering from vaginal aplasia, the scientific term for being born without one. (It may also be called the "Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome.") The rest of her reproductive organs are usually there, but the path for the sperm to take to fertilize her eggs is missing, and that was a thorny medical problem—until recently, when scientists succeeded in growing artificial vaginas in vitro and transplanting them into women who lacked them.
"This is not like a defective organ that you augment or something you put in between two places," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and lead author of a vaginal organ study recently published in the British medical journal The Lancet. "We had to create the organ. We put it in de novo."
What happens is, scientists create a 3D replica of a vaginal canal, referred to as a "scaffold," which is the size of the missing organ they wish to replace, made out of biodegradable material. They then harvest small swatches of tissue and muscle from the patient, apply them to the scaffold, put the mixture in a growth medium, and wait a few weeks.
Typically, the patient's tissue and muscle will begin to grow, covering the scaffold, and when that growth is completed, the scientists stitch the material to the scaffold and surgically implant the new organ into the proper location. They then keep watch as the scaffold dissolves and the new vagina attaches itself to the woman's uterine walls, continuing to grow both inwardly and outwardly. When the scientists are satisfied that the new organ is receiving blood flow from the "host" and that nerves are beginning to generate within the structure, it's ready for its road test—typically about six months after implantation.
"The four women who received implants [in the Wake Forest study] were each asked to fill out a 'sexual function index' where they rate their experience of desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, and satisfaction, as well as the absence of pain during intercourse," reported Cory Silverberg of About.com's sexuality blog. "All four women scored themselves high across all domains."
Of course, success with just four patients means that there are a lot more studies needed of the technique—and it's a far cry from the "Vacanti mouse" of 17 years ago, which used cow cartilege to construct the scaffold for a human ear and implanted it onto a mouse's back. Still, the technique holds a lot of promise, not only for women born without vaginas, but also for those whose organs have become damaged by injury or disease.
Pictured: Scientist growing a vagina in the Wake Forest lab.
