{"id":240032,"date":"2026-06-30T18:12:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T23:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/scientists-engineer-personalized-cartilage-graft-for-infants-with-life-threatening-airway-narrowing"},"modified":"2026-06-30T18:12:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T23:12:30","slug":"scientists-engineer-personalized-cartilage-graft-for-infants-with-life-threatening-airway-narrowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/scientists-engineer-personalized-cartilage-graft-for-infants-with-life-threatening-airway-narrowing","title":{"rendered":"Scientists engineer personalized cartilage graft for infants with life-threatening airway narrowing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-engineer-personalized-cartilage-graft-for-infants-with-life-threatening-airway-narrowing2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A study led by researchers at Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) demonstrates a new method of using decellularized cartilage with patient-specific cells to help enlarge pediatric airways narrowed as a result of severe subglottic stenosis. Researchers demonstrate that this new method is faster, more effective and able to overcome issues associated with the current standard grafts, such as donor site morbidity, insufficient tissue volume and a delayed timeline. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>Severe subglottic stenosis is a narrowing of the airway below the vocal cords and above the trachea. An estimated 20,000 infants per year are affected by this condition. The most severe cases require laryngotracheal reconstruction (LTR), an open-airway surgery used to enlarge the airway by implanting cartilage taken from the rib cage.<\/p>\n<p>While LTR is used to successfully treat thousands of children with subglottic stenosis, in many cases, young children lack enough costal cartilage\u2014the cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum\u2014for these grafts. As a result, operations often need to be delayed, leaving the child attached to a tracheostomy tube until they are older, and there is a higher risk of needing follow-up surgery because the airway is at risk of narrowing again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study led by researchers at Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) demonstrates a new method of using decellularized cartilage with patient-specific cells to help enlarge pediatric airways narrowed as a result of severe subglottic stenosis. Researchers demonstrate that this new method is faster, more effective and able to overcome issues associated with the current standard [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}