Tissue Engineering for Blood Vessels

Recent advancements in tissue engineering are making coronary bypass surgery easier than ever. Normally, a bypass operation works by taking a blood vessel out of the body and relocating it to the heart where it is more useful in supplying blood. However, finding a blood vessel that won't be missed is hard. Essentially, this new technology will allow a new vein or artery to be grown outside the body and used for the surgery instead of taking the vessel from inside the body. This will reduce complications in the operation.

Likewise, the method can be applied to kidney dialysis as well. Normally, kidney dialysis is done by connecting blood vessels to the dialysis machine, resulting in a junction that isn't normal. This causes blood to not reach certain areas it should. Essentially, the availability of engineered vessels is analagous to extra tubing; in other words, it allows the blood to get to all places in the body and to the machine.

The body does not reject this lab-grown replacement as it is made of the patient's own cells. As in many other forms of tissue engineering, the scaffold is seeded with endothelial cells, which then grow to form the desired organ or tissue. This and other advances in the field of tissue engineering are showing very promising signs of revolutionizing the medical field.

Source: http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/03/bioengineering-better-blood-vessels

Image: Tissue-engineered blood vessels, originally seeded with skin cells.