The U.S. Military is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide face transplants and follow-up care for a small group of civilians who suffered traumatic injuries. The intent is to find ways to help servicemen and women who receive disfiguring injuries in combat.

Among the group is Charla Nash, a woman who was attacked by a chimpanzee in 2009, losing her eyes, hands and many of her facial features. The military paid for her face transplant in 2011 and is footing the bill for her follow-up care. The estimated cost for an experimental surgery like Nash's face transplant is $350,000, which isn't covered by private insurance.

Now, the military is funding an experiment to wean the 61-year-old Nash off the anti-rejection drugs she's been taking since the transplant was performed. The experiment will be conducted at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Most transplant patients must take immunosuppression drugs for the remainder of their lives, but the drugs increase the risk of cancer, viral infections and kidney damage. Due to the risk, many transplants of nonvital body parts aren't routinely conducted.

However, if Nash successfully comes off immunosuppression therapy, it could change decisions about which transplants are performed in the future.

"Suddenly, it's not as crazy to think about transplanting individual fingers or an ear," Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, who led Nash's transplant surgery team, told The Associated Press.

Nash will begin taking Interleukin-2, a drug normally used to treat skin and kidney cancers. The intent is for the drug to promote the growth of good cells to protect the transplanted tissue while keeping the body's defense mechanisms from attacking it.

Since Nash has experienced few rejection episodes, she is a good candidate for this experiment.

"I think there's an overarching purpose in her life. She really wants to help in whatever way she can," Pomahac said. "She's very much a forward-looking woman."

Along with the Interleukin-2 experiment, Nash also undergoes lab tests about every six weeks at the same hospital at the Army's request. She has MRIs and CT scans to determine how well her brain communicates with her new face, and physicians examine how well the arteries perfuse blood to the transplant areas. The military is also interested in such things as any scarring around the mouth and how well her eyelids work.

Nash told the AP that she welcomes the opportunity to "do something good out of all of this bad."

The military is not paying for prosthetic hands for Nash who had also undergone a double hand transplant. However, the tissue was rejected.

"It makes sense for us to look at the civilian community and the experiences that are gained through the involvement of nonuniformed people to assess if this is a good solution for the military," said Dr. Brian Pfister, a portfolio manager for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command's Clinical and Rehabilitative Medicine research program.

Since the first partial face transplant was conducted in 2005, some 35 full or partial face transplants have been performed worldwide. Since the face and extremities are the most frequently injured body parts in war, the Pentagon has a significant interest in facial transplants and research surrounding the experimental procedure.

According to the Department of Defense, about 560 soldiers have received traumatic facial wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pfister said some 50 or 60 could be candidates for face transplants. To further research, the military is giving grant money to 14 medical centers around the country through its hand and face transplantation program.