Bioengineering better blood vessels
Durable conduits made by living cells might boost options for dialysis, heart bypass patients
By Nathan Seppa
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Using human cells as tiny factories, researchers can grow new blood vessels that might someday provide a valuable option for patients undergoing surgery for kidney dialysis or a heart bypass. The new study testing the bioengineered vessels in baboons and dogs raises the prospect of mass-producing such natural-tissue vessels, researchers report in the Feb. 2 Science Translational Medicine.
In coronary bypass surgery, a vein is typically stripped out of a part of the body that can manage without it and implanted on the heart as a conduit supplying blood to the heart muscle. But in some patients, vessels are inaccessible due to obesity, deterioration or having been used up in other operations. Those individuals have few alternatives beyond medication, says study coauthor Alan Kypson, a surgeon at East Carolina University School of Medicine in Greenville. “A blood vessel that comes right off the shelf for a bypass — that’s potentially groundbreaking stuff,” he says.