Bioengineered Blood Vessels Can Become Like a Patient's Own

Vascular surgeons have dreamed of creating blood vessels with the mechanical and immunological properties of patients' own vessels. When autologous vessels (such as internal mammary arteries for coronary bypass grafting) are not available, such synthesized vessels would be life-saving.

A U.S. team affiliated with a biotechnology company created a biodegradable mesh cylinder, seeded it with human vascular cells, and placed it in a bioreactor where culture media could be pulsed through it constantly. An extracellular matrix with strong mechanical properties gradually formed, replacing the biodegradable cylinder. Then, the human vascular cells that had created the matrix were destroyed (since they likely would be immunologically incompatible wi…