A team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have grown limb of rat in lab. It's considered to be evidence that human limb transplant surgery using patient's own biological material could one day be a reality.

In the journal Biomaterials, they have explained their work with an animal model. Study's senior author Harald Ott, MD, of the MGH Department of Surgery and the Center for Regenerative Medicine, said that the limb has been grown with functioning vascular veins and muscle tissue.

"The composite nature of our limbs makes building a functional biological replacement particularly challenging. Limbs contain muscles, bone, cartilage, blood vessels, tendons, ligaments and nerves -- each of which has to be rebuilt and requires a specific supporting structure called the matrix", said Ott.

Ott said that in their animal model they have very well explained that they are able to maintain the matrix of all the tissues in their natural relationships to each other. Therefore, they can repopulate the vascular system.

If patient's own genetic material is used then it reduces the risk of rejection of the transplant. Also, need for life-long immunosuppressant drugs get eliminated. Growing an entire limb is much more complex and has more than a single tissue type.

The problem was solved with the help of technology already being in use for lab-grown organs. In the technique, a neutral matrix is created by stripping a donor organ of its cells. Neutral matrix can be populated with cells from the patient.

It is the first time that a limb has been grown for the first time through this technique.