A 65-year-old Finnish man had his upper jaw replaced with a bone transplant that was cultivated from his own stem cells and grown inside his abdomen.

When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it inside the patient's abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the researchers said.

The block was later transplanted into the patient's head and connected to the skull bone using screws and microsurgery to connect arteries and veins to the vessels of the neck.

The patient's upper jaw had previously been removed due to a benign tumor and he was unable to eat or speak without the use of a removable prosthesis.