A team of British scientists is working on growing body parts including noses, ears and blood vessels in the lab.
Professor Alexander Seifalian and his team at the Royal Free Hospital say they are close to implanting body parts into patients grown from stem cells.
"It's like making a cake," Seifalian told the AP while posing with some of his synthetic body parts (pictured). "We just use a different kind of oven."
Above: Professor Alexander Seifalian poses for photographs with a synthetic polymer nose
The British lab has so far implanted patients with parts including tear ducts, blood vessels and windpipes.
They have also made a nose out of polymer, covered in a salt-sugar solution and covered with stem cells grown around the scaffold, for a man who lost his own nose to cancer.
The nose is now being grown on the man's arm before - hopefully - being removed and sewn onto his face.
Seifalian's team is among several teams around the world working on similar efforts to revolutionise transplant medicine.
Above: Professor Alexander Seifalian speaks next to an automated dip coating machine with a synthetic mould of a windpipe inside at his research facility