MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH: Penis transplant now possible

The growth of Biotechnology has come to the level where penises can be bioengineered in the laboratory and transplanted safely on to patients. A team of scientists are succeeding in that regard after 20 years of research.

In 2008, the group led by Anthony Atala in a lab at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina gathered and watched anxiously to see if two rabbits they had put together would have sex. Jubilation filled the lab when without wasting time, the male mounted the female and successfully mated.

The male rabbit was one of 12 for which Atala and his team had bioengineered a penis. They all mated; eight reached ejaculation while four went on to produce offspring.

That became proof that the sexual organs could be grown in a laboratory and transplanted to humans.

To Atala, a urological surgeon and professor of regenerative medicine, it was beyond the novelty. IT was more about the fact that his work would fulfil a real need for men who have lost their penis through genital defects, traumatic injury, surgery for aggressive penile cancer, or even “jilted lovers’ attacks”.

Prof. Anthony Atala

According to a Guardian UK report, the only treatment option available for these men is to have a penis constructed with skin and muscle from their thigh or forearm while sexual function is restored with a penile prosthetic placed inside. It is however realized that the aesthetics are crude and the penetration, discomfited. Another option is a penis transplant from another individual, but this carries a risk of immunological rejection.

Atala believes his technique would eradicate the immunological and psychological limitations of previous options because his penises would be engineered using a patient’s own cells.

He explains: “The phallus is actually much longer than you think. It goes all the way behind the pelvis, so no matter the extent of the damage, there is a high probability that there are salvageable cells.”