Off-the-shelf blood vessels could soon be a reality, as scientists have come up with a way to grow new human veins in the laboratory.
The lab-made blood vessels, which can be stored for up to a year and safely transplanted into any patient, could revolutionise heart surgery, said the researchers behind the breakthrough. They also claimed the blood vessels could soon replace artificial versions, which easily clog and cause infection, in a number of operations, including thousands of heart bypasses a year, the Telegraph reported.
Scientists have already developed a technique to engineer blood vessels from a patient’s own cells, but this process takes over nine months and patients usually cannot wait that long for surgery. The new technique, developed by a team at the East Carolina University in the US, involved making the vessels in advance by using random donor cells from human tissue to grow collagen on a biodegradable “scaffold” tube or mould made from a polymer.
When the scaffold dissolves away, fully formed blood vessels are left behind. These are then “washed” of the original human cells so that they were completely benign and unlikely to cause any rejection in the body of a recipient, the researchers reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
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Heal burns fast with stem cell spray gun
London: Scientists have developed an amazing spray gun that speedily heals severe burn injuries with stem cells. Jörg Gerlach from the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, US, has created a method which regenerates healthy skin stem cells from the victim and sprays it on the burned skin.
Though scientists have been able to regenerate sheets of skin for decades, it is a lengthy process and the resulting skin is extremely fragile. —ians