Blood vessels grown from patient's own tissues used successfully in human patients

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 1 month (www.nytimes.com)

Thirteen months and so far so good. Unlike earlier techniques used in Japan, which involved growing cells on a scaffold that slowly dissolved after implantation, scientists in Argentina grew whole stretches of blood vessel from the patients' own cells. The patients in question have damaged veins and arteries in their arms from regular dialysis.

This does not involve stem cells of any kind. A strip of skin is removed from the patient, but the fibroblast and endothelial cells are taken from the inside of the veins in that strip of skin.

This new technique is more expensive than the standard method, coming to $15,000 to $20,000. That is expected to go down.

Keywords: rejection tissue rejection epithelial cells fibroblasts arteries veins cardiovascular surgery cardiovascular vascular vascular surgery stem cells stem cell in vitro tissue culture transplants dialysis