Devauchelle said most of the facial muscles of the recipient were preserved and it was mostly a question of attaching the donor skin and nerves.

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Even the hair on Wiens' head, from the mid-scalp area, is part of the donor skin (the hair on the back of Wiens' head is his own).

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The woman is undergoing a strict regimen of immunosuppression therapy so her body does not reject the donor skin, a problem that has been encountered in other skin transplants, the doctors said.

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After several days, the ball of cells that results contains a blanket of embryonic stem cells endowed with the genetic material of the donor skin cell, which have the ability to generate every cell type from that donor.

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He described the potential of using a patient's own skin cells and a donor egg to produce neural cells that would be injected into the brain.

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There was a donor whose hands matched Kepner's skin color, gender and size.

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The place where that skin came from, called the "donor site, " often causes a lot of pain, but heals within two to three weeks, said Jill Sproul, nurse manager at the Burn Center of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, California, who did not treat Jackson.

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In a 15-hour procedure in mid-March, doctors gave Wiens a donor forehead, nasal structure, nose, lips and facial skin.

CNN: Face transplant patient ready to go home

In a 15-hour procedure, doctors used donated tissue to give Wiens a donor forehead, nasal structure, nose, lips and facial skin.

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