Toddler recovering after receiving skin transplant from cloned m - DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG

Toddler recovering after receiving skin transplant from cloned mouse cells

A South African toddler is recovering after receiving a transplant of cloned skin to treat severe burns.

Three-year-old Isabella Kruger suffered burns to over eighty percent of her body when a bottle of fire-lighting gel exploded at a family barbecue.

Burn victims rarely survive such severe burns.

In the months that followed the accident, Isabella survived multiple cardiac arrests and organ failure before undergoing the skin transplant.

She is now fully awake and no longer relying on feeding tubes.

Isabella received thirty to forty grafts of skin -- which had been cloned in a Boston laboratory using mouse cells as a scaffold.

Her mother is aware that recovery will take a long time but she is optimistic.

"She's doing really, really well and last night when we opened the bandages we saw, that it's, it (the cloned skin) took perfectly. She's moving so much more it's like she can feel she's better," her mother Anice Kruger said.

"We'd rehearsed, you know, the operation quite a few times in our minds and chatting about it and just getting the team together beforehand. So I think, we have shown that these 'ops' are complicated but they're not impossible," said plastic surgeon Ridwan Mia.

The three-year-old will have to undergo daily physiotherapy, and will also need speech therapy and psychological counseling.

SOURCE: APTN