First womb-transplant baby won't be alone for%

Описание: YOUR DESCRIPTION HAS REACHED THE LIMIT OF CHARACTERS ALLOWED AND WAS CUT. GOTHENBURG, Sweden (AP) -- The world's first baby born from a transplanted womb is soon to have company.

Two more women who became pregnant after having womb transplants are due to deliver in the next few weeks - and that could be the start of a new wave of babies born this way, say the Swedish doctors who pioneered the technique.

"It means a lot to me that we are able to help patients who have tried for so long to have families," said Dr. Mats Brannstrom, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Gothenburg, who led the project that brought about last month's pioneering birth. "This is the last piece of the puzzle in finding a treatment for all women with infertility problems."

Brannstrom predicted there would soon be many more babies born to women who have received donated wombs in countries where doctors are studying the technique, including Australia, Britain, the U.S., Japan and China.

Brannstrom said he has also started work on trying to grow a womb in the lab. That involves taking a womb from a deceased donor, stripping it of its DNA, then using cells from the recipient to line the structure. He has started preliminary tests in animals and estimated it would be another five years before the technique can be tried on humans.

While that may sound like science fiction, the techniques that led to the birth announced last week also sounded outlandish just years ago. "It makes what was formerly impossible possible," said Dr. Nannette Santoro, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado. She was not involved in Brannstrom's research.

The happy couple in Sweden named their son "Vincent" - which means "to conquer" - to celebrate a victory over their difficult journey to parenthood.

Welcoming The Associated Press into her home, the mother cradled her sleeping baby in a spotless, stylish kitchen where an errant pacifier on the counter was one of the only clues that a newborn was around.

She said she still could not believe she is a mother, after discovering at 15 that she had no womb and being told that she would never carry her own children. Now 36, she was one of nine women to receive a transplanted womb last year in a ground-breaking trial led by Brannstrom.

The mother spoke on condition the exact location of her home not be revealed