Italian doctors have built the world's first biotech vagina.
So far, two patients lacking vaginas because of a rare malformation have been helped to grow ones, using stem cells taken from their own bodies.
Vaginal tissue was grown from the cells and surgically grafted into the women's groins at Rome's Umberto I university hospital.
In the first case, a 28-year-old woman received 0.3 square centimetres of mucous membrane a year ago and has since grown a vagina.
She has married and is "in good health," doctors said Wednesday.
The second case involved a 17-year-old woman who was operated on Tuesday. Doctors said she was progressing well and 99% of the mucous-membrane strip had grafted.
Luigi Frati, head of the faculty of medicine at Umberto 1 and the La Sapienza University, said the biotech vagina showed "how fast research can be turned into clinical practice".
The researcher who grew the stem cells, Cinzia Marchese, called the operations "a first step" towards possible similar breakthroughs in creating intestinal, oral and eye tissues - including corneas.
An account of the first operation and the patient's subsequent progress is set to be published in the international journal Human Reproduction.
Approximately one in every 5,000 female infants is born without a vagina.
Vaginal agenesis, or absence of the vagina, is a congenital disorder of the female reproductive tract.
The cause of vaginal agenesis is unknown.
One of the most common forms of the disorder is Mayer-von Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser's syndrome.
The two women operated on in Rome had it.
