Placental Power: How Discarded Organs Can Heal Us

Authored by: Sophia Trapani

Art by: Tiffany Lu

Marcella Townsend's ears rang as she looked around her mother’s destroyed kitchen, pain coursing through her body after a propane explosion. As a result of the explosion, she noticed that the cabinets had been caved in and realized how lucky she was to still be alive. Despite her fortune, Townsend, covered in severe second and third degree burns, spent six weeks in a Savannah burn unit; her face was barely recognizable.  Today however, her face looks exactly like it did before the accident, all thanks to a rarely utilized medical tool: the human placenta [1].  

The placenta is a transitory organ that forms in the womb during pregnancy, bringing oxygen and nutrients from the mother to the developing fetus [2].  More importantly, placental grafts, which are panels of material derived from the donated placental tissue, can provide innumerable health benefits to patients with varying conditions, helping to prevent scar tissue, heal chronic wounds, and even restore vision [1].  These grafts are not only beneficial for patents, as they hold incredible research promise for researchers who can use placental stem cells to develop new models for studying reproductive conditions and various forms of cancer [3]. 

Before exploring how the placenta can assist patients like Townsend, it is important to understand the history of placental grafts as we use them today.  Placentas have long been used as treatment mechanisms, as they were first documented in American medical literature in 1911 [4].  However, it was really in the 1970s that the placenta gained national recognition, when Dr. Andrew Walker, a leading pediatrician of the time, was finally awarded a grant to start a tissue bank, ensuring that placental donation became an integral part of postpartum care [4].  However, despite the promise for patient support and research, the majority of placentas are discarded as medical waste and ultimately incinerated [3]. Specifically, during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, hospitals were forced to change their placental donation policies due to homophobic misconceptions about disease spread through human tissue [5].  Instead of addressing these biases, policy in hospitals today continues to discard the very organ that could be used to save countless lives. The shift in hospital policy surrounding placental use ultimately prompts us to question how we, as a scientific community, can change the status quo in order to take full advantage of all the placenta has to offer.

Beyond its usefulness throughout history, placental grafts are at the forefront of emerging medical technologies.  Take, for example, one of its main uses: regenerative grafting!  Assisting countless patients like Marcela Townsend to heal and ultimately get their lives back.  Another patient, Jeff Strayer, recounts how instrumental placental grafts were to his healing process.  Strayer was a machinist from Cleveland, Ohio, who–after an on the job accident–badly damaged his eyes with sodium hydroxide, a highly toxic and corrosive chemical.  Thanks to the quick thinking of his surgeons who applied placental cell grafts, his vision was not only saved, but his scars are now barely visible.  With the millions of patients, like Strayer, who would benefit from making placental grafts widely available, it is key to understand how these grafts function.  A placental graft has two main factors that contribute to its healing power: its immunological privilege and its wealth of stem cells (6).  First, the organ’s internal immune system develops early in pregnancy to serve as a defense mechanism against outside infections, allowing transplanted tissue to have unique anti-infective properties [7].  In addition, the placenta has a high concentration of stem cells, which act as a scaffold for the differentiation and proliferation of new skin cells.  So, when applied to an open wound, the placental graft halts damage progression, protects the area from infection, and encourages new growth for lasting healing [8].  By combining the anti-infective properties with the abundance of stem cells, placental grafts have actually become more effective at treating wounds than the traditional cadaver, synthetic, or animal grafts, all the while ensuring that the chance of graft rejection remains as close to zero as possible [8].

Clearly, the placenta and its derived grafts have innumerable benefits.  When Marcella Townsend returned to work as a surgical assistant, she cringed every time she heard an obstetrician tell her to discard the placenta after a c-section. She hopes that her story of healing can help change hospital policies, ultimately shifting the narrative surrounding the placenta’s use.  So the next time she assists at a birth, the surgeons will instead pass the placenta’s properties onto the next patient, like her, who so desperately needs it.

References:

1. Morgan, K. (2024, October 8). Placentas Can Help Heal Wounds and Burns. Why Do We Throw Them Away? Nytimes.com; The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/well/placenta-donations-burns-wounds.html 

2. Mayo Clinic. (2018). Placenta: How it works, what’s normal. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/placenta/art-20044425

3. Gerhard, D. (2023, December 3). The Ephemeral Life of the Placenta. The Scientist Magazine®. https://www.the-scientist.com/the-ephemeral-life-of-the-placenta-71516

4. Rossel, C. (1981, March 13). Human placentas used to cure wounds and treat burns - UPI Archives. UPI. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/03/13/Human-placentas-used-to-cure-wounds-and-treat-burns/8295353307600/

5. Call, T. M. (1988, October 4). AMNION BURNOUT SUPPLY OF “MIRACLE” TISSUE MELTS WITH REQUIRED AIDS, HEPATITIS TEST. The Morning Call. https://www.mcall.com/1988/10/04/amnion-burnout-supply-of-miracle-tissue-melts-with-required-aids-hepatitis-test/?clearUserState=true

6. Roy, A., Mantay, M., Brannan, C., & Griffiths, S. (2022). Placental Tissues as Biomaterials in Regenerative Medicine. BioMed Research International, 2022, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/6751456

7. Balasundaram, P., & Farhana, A. (2022). Immunology At The Maternal-Fetal Interface. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK574542/

8. Protzman, N. M., Mao, Y., Long, D., Raja Sivalenka, Gosiewska, A., Hariri, R., & Brigido, S. A. (2023). Placental-Derived Biomaterials and Their Application to Wound Healing: A Review. Bioengineering, 10(7), 829–829. https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10070829