According to CNN Health – June 2011 –
Engineers announced at an American Heart Association conference on emerging technology that they can grow sheets of human cells from human skin cells in a laboratory, and synthesize them into tubes to function as blood vessels.
The engineered blood vessels is particularly useful to patients who need their blood filtered by hemodialysis, the most common type of dialysis for patients with kidney failure. That process requires routinely puncturing a shunt with a large needle.
This technology has been available in the past. The difference is that past technology uses patient’s own skin cells which takes too long (about six months) and cost too much. The new technology instead uses allogeneic skin cells coming from one “master” donor which can be kept on the shelf under refrigeration for months. Even though the new technology does not use patient’s own cell, the anti-rejection cost is minimal to present as a problem after three patients have had the allogeneic blood vessel grafted into their bodies. They have been working well in the patient’s body for at least 8 months now.
Todd McAllister, Ph.D., the CEO of the Cytograft Tissue Engineering, which creates this technology, says “the human-tissue engineered vasculature will last approximately three years in patients – a big improvement over the life of plastic shunts which currently require multiple changes every year.”
The new technology have many other potential applications in addition to those patients who need dialysis. One application is for those who broke their limbs, surgeons would be able to effectively replace the old blood vessels, thereby saving more tissue from amputation. Another potential application of the technology is for coronary arterial bypass graft surgery, or heart bypass surgery.
In children with congenital heart defects, surgeons often repair vessels with synthetic materials, which have to be replaced as the child grows. These engineered vessels have the potential to grow with the patient, reducing the number of additional surgeries as the child grow up.
