“Off-the-Shelf” Implantable Artificial Blood Vessels
November 22, 2016 | Terry Sharrer
Eight years ago, Doris Taylor at the University of Minnesota grew a beating rat heart from a decellularized donor heart, and repopulated it with rat stem cells. Now, other researchers at the same school have decellularized donor sheep blood vessels and then regrew them with sheep skin cells. “When the vessel graft replaced a part of the pulmonary artery in three lambs at five weeks of age, the implanted vessels were soon populated by the lambs’ own cells, causing the vessel to bend its shape and grow together with the recipient until adulthood.” The researchers suppose human blood vessels could be grown in the same way and banked until surgeons need them. MORE
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