Professor Alexander Seifalian leads University College London’s (UCL) Department of Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine, which he jokingly calls the "human body parts store." In one of many world firsts, the professor and his team are growing a nose for a patient.

At the cutting edge of modern science, Seifalian and his team are focusing on growing replacement organs and body parts to order using a patient's own cells. Because the organ is made from the patients own cells, the risk of rejection could be eliminated in theory.

"Nobody has ever grown a nose before," he says. Another landmark is a trachea – a windpipe – used in the world’s first synthetic organ transplant. In the modest lab at the Royal Free Hospital above Hampstead Heath in north London are the ingredients for the revolutionary nanomaterial at the heart of his creations.

A few miles south of this, another team, led by Professor Pete Coffey of the London Project to Cure Blindness, are using stem cells to tackle the most common form of age-related sight loss, which affects over half a million people in the U.K. alone. Coffey's project is perhaps the most advanced major regenerative medicine project in the world today.

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