Iranian scientists announce that the first artificial windpipe will be ready to be transplanted on a human in the coming month.

The head of Masih Daneshvari Hospital, Ali Akbar Velayati told Fars News Agency that Iranians are the first in the world to have succeeded in developing a whole artificial windpipe (trachea), adding that the organ already developed in Spain is a bronchiole rather than a trachea.

“While tracheal transplantation is routinely performed in our center, finding an accurate trachea which matches the receivers’ condition is rather difficult. These patients, moreover, are forced to use different types of medication for all their lives, aiming to prevent possible rejections,” stressed Ali Akbar Velayati.

Velayati said this artificial trachea is mainly designed to save the life of individuals who do not respond to existing treatments and surgeries. Apart from patients with various respiratory diseases, chemically wounded veterans may also benefit from such tracheas.

Velayati added that the patient’s own stem cells are used in this innovative trachea, a trick which has overcome many of the problems caused by existing techniques.

In this innovative technique, Jallaleldin Qanavi and his colleagues used specific polymers to produce structures similar to tracheal cartilages.

In order to produce the cells, stem cells were extracted from the patient and then cultured on this cell-free structure. According to Qanavi, these stem cells were cultured in the patients own abdomen for some six months before being transplanted on the damaged trachea.

Former Iranian interior minister Ali Kordan has died at the age of 51 from an incurable type of blood cancer at a hospital in Tehran.

Kordan had long been struggling with multiple myeloma, the cancer of a type of white blood cells found in the bone marrow and known as plasma cells.

Kordan, who had became really weak because of receiving chemotherapy agents, was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran due to flu-like symptoms. He was then diagnosed with A/H1N1 flu.

He thereafter developed intracranial hemorrhage and was dependent on the mechanical ventilation for breathing during the past few days.

A former revolutionary guard, Kordan was appointed deputy oil minister in around October 2007. He had turned down the offer of the same position in 2006.

He served briefly as the minister of the interior between August and November 2008, when the Iranian parliament voted to dismiss him following his impeachment.