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We’re in an age of organ transplants so it was inevitable we’d get around to penises. Dr Anthony Atala has been working on the problem since 1999 and he’s had considerable success – in rabbits.

No human beings so far, but his team at the Wake Forrest Institute in North Carolina, US is close. Another five years, they say.

Which is very good news for any man who has lost his penis either through genital defects, injury or perhaps surgery for an aggressive case of penile cancer.

At present the only treatment option for these men is to have a penis constructed with skin and muscle from the thigh or forearm. Sexual function can be restored with a prosthesis placed inside.

Prosthetics options leave the patient either with a “bendy” permanently semi-rigid penis which is hard to hide, or with inflatable rods powered by a saline pump in the scrotum.

Both technologies have been around since the 1970s. The aesthetics leave a lot to be desired and penetration is not smooth.

Another option is a transplant from another man, but this carries a risk of immunological rejection.

Dr Atala hopes his technique will solve both this and psychological issues because his penises would be engineered using a patient’s own cells.

“The phallus is much longer than you think,” he says. “It goes all the way behind the pelvis, so no matter the extent of the damage, there is a high probability that there are salvageable cells.”

While you may think growing human organs is science fiction, for Dr Atala it’s an absolute necessity.

As we live longer (and thus our organs fail more) the shortage of organs for donation will only get worse. If he can work out how to generate the organs people need in a reliable and effective way, the technology can improve a lot of people’s lives.

In 2006 he and his team announced the first successful bio-engineered organ transplant, a bladder, which had been implanted into seven patients in 1999.

Earlier this year he described the successful follow-up of four women given bio-engineered vaginas in 2005-2008. Despite these successes, he says the penis is proving trickier because it consists of several different types of tissue.

Though Dr Atala has already engineered half a dozen human penises his first target is partial replacement.

In the short term, this would include growing smaller lengths for partially damaged penises, but would also include replacing parts of the penis to help cure erectile dysfunction.