Hospitals face a perennial lack of organ donors that many patients die waiting for kidneys, hearts and livers but an international group of researchers may have found a way to solve this by proposing that doctors could grow fully-functioning organs for their patients.

A new report from the journal, The Lancet tells the possibility of using a patient's own stem cells to grow into organs. The approach has several advantages to traditional transplant techniques. The revolutionary method would eliminate the need for human donors and has no need for immunosuppressive drugs and since the new organs would come from the patient's own cell there is no risk of rejection when the organ is transplanted inside the patient.

The technique was developed by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. In involves using naturally occurring extra-cellular matrix as a biological scaffold which is then inserted with the patient's own stem cells to build organs and tissues that are ready to be transplanted.

"Such an approach has already been used successfully for the repair and reconstruction of several complex tissues such as the trachea, esophagus, and skeletal muscle in animal models and human beings, and guided by appropriate scientific and ethical oversight, could serve as a platform for the engineering of whole organs and other tissues, and might become a viable and practical future therapeutic approach to meet demand after organ failure," wrote lead author, Paolo Macchiarini in The Lancet.

Finding organ donors is a rising problem in many countries. According to Donate Life there are around 1600 people on Australian organ transplant waiting lists. The average waiting time for transplants is about 4 years. On average one Australian dies each week waiting for a life saving transplant.

The new technique could cut down the waiting time for many organ transplant patients but the researchers still have to tackle several challenges before making the method available for general use. Macchiarini and his team still has to identify the best possible cell sources for various organs, the optimum scaffold material and which patients would be suitable for the procedure.

"The pressure to advance this technique, driven by demand, the race for prestige, and the potential for huge profits, mandates an early commitment be made to establish the safety of various strategies...particularly when there are so many potential patients and doctors who are desperate for any remedy that offers hope."