The goal is to produce healthy, functioning blood vessels built exclusively from a person's own cells, so the body's immune system won't reject the new tissue. Such vessels would be important in heart and leg bypass operations and for vessels called arteriovenous shunts used for dialysis patients.
The scientists reported that tissue-engineered blood vessels didn't burst or develop blood clots in laboratory tests and short-term animal experiments.
"The study's most important findings were: First, the technology works from a commercial perspective, meaning we can build mechanically sound vessels for a wide array of patients using the exact same protocol," says Todd McAllister, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Cytograft Tissue Engineering in Novato, Calif., which developed the vessel-building technique.
"Second, we demonstrated that thrombogenesis (the formation of blood clots) does not appear to be a problem in the short term up to 14 days. Short-term blood clots are the biggest challenge facing most synthetic materials, whether they are used for blood vessels, new heart valves, or other vascular prostheses. We expect to begin this research in humans within 18 months."
In the study reported today, researchers took fibroblast cells from 11 patients (ages 54 to 84) with advanced cardiovascular disease who had coronary artery bypass operations at Stanford University. Fibroblasts form the outer wall of blood vessels. The researchers used endothelial cells from animals to make the inner lining of the vessels.
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Contact: Carole Bullock
carole.bullock@heart.org
214-706-1279
American Heart Association
17-Nov-2002