The groundbreaking project is being led by Alexander Seifalian – the man who constructed the first synthetic trachea to be transplanted into a patient.
If could potentially transform the lives of women with disorders such a vaginal artesia, where the vagina is abnormally closed or absent or Mayer–Rokitansky–Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, in which the vagina does not fully develop.
The treatment could also be applied to patients with vaginal cancer or injuries.
Professor Seifalian is carrying out the work at London-based NanoRegMed, which is one of several labs around the world working on the futuristic idea of growing custom-made organs in the lab. He extracted muscle and cells from a patient and joined them with the pig intestine, by feeding them nutrients that allowed the cells to grow and merge together.
The next step will be to transplant the vagina scaffold into a human.
Professor Seifalian said: 'The construct will be taken from the operating theatre and inserted into the patient. Experimental stage
However, the surgeon admits that the scheme is at an 'experimental' stage – and he said it could take up to five years to be used in patients.
His work follows on from that of Dr Anthony Atala in the US.
His team successfully grown vaginas in a laboratory and implanted them into four teenage patients between 2005 and 2008.
They did not have their own developed vaginas and the artificial organs were created using their own tissue cells.
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