Life can be really difficult for women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. Born with an absent or underdeveloped vagina, women suffering MRKH often have difficulty experiencing a normal sex life, can fail to menstruate and sometimes cannot reproduce naturally.

But now, researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have found a way to normalize life for women with severe cases of MRKH: Using patients’ own cells, they have successfully grown vaginas in a laboratory setting and implanted them into four women, Fox News reported.

Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and a pediatric urologic surgeon, said he and his team have been working on the development of laboratory-grown vaginas for about 25 years, figuring out how to properly harvest and grow vaginal cells, and then testing the procedure on mice.

The harvested cells are grown in a laboratory for four weeks, where they are then layered onto a scaffolding molded into the shape of a vaginal organ. Each mold is specifically designed to meet the needs of the individual patient.

“We then are able to place this structure in an incubator, an oven-like device with the same conditions as the human body, and then the structure is able to mature somewhat, at which point we are able to insert it into the patient,” Atala said.

For their study, Atala and his colleagues recruited four women between ages 13 to 18, all of whom suffered from severe forms of MRKH. The surgeries were performed between June 2005 and October 2008. For up to eight years after the procedure, each woman was closely monitored to detect for complications and underwent numerous tests to assess the function of her lab-grown organ.

Overall, the surgeries were remarkably successful and showed healthy results in tests of functionality including desire, arousal, lubrication, sensation and painless intercourse.

The team at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is currently testing the procedure on more patients, and is working towards clinical trials.