These blood vessels have grown in a laboratory with real human cells

Every year, about 185,000 people in the United States were subjected amputation. Nearly half of these due to the infected blood vessels cut blood circulation to the ends. Surgeons can plant a proper vein from another place in the patient’s body to avoid amputation, but not every person has the right vein for harvesting.

New progress in Tissue engineering It can help. In December, the Food and Drug Administration agreed Vascular biological engineering To treat vascular shock. Designed by the Biotechnology Company in North Carolina, it is designed to restore blood flow in patients with painful injuries, such as gunshots, car accidents, industrial accidents, or fighting.

“Some patients have been so severely wounded that they do not have any available veins,” says Laura Niklason, founder and chief executive of Humacyte. Even when the patient has a usable person, the vein is often a good alternative to the artery. “Your veins are very thin. They are small, weak structures, and your arteries are very strong.”

Nickeson became interested for the first time in the idea of ​​spare blood vessels in the 1990s, when she was training to be a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital. Remember to monitor the patient who is undergoing the heart, which includes the use of a healthy container to recycle blood flow around the prohibited coronary artery. The surgeon opened the patient’s legs, arms, and finally, the stomach, in search of a blood vessel suitable for its use. “It was really a barbarian,” says Nickeson. I thought there should be a better way.

It started with increasing blood vessels in the laboratory from a few cells collected from the arteries of the pig. When she cultivated them in the animal, they worked like a real thing.

After those early experiments, it was a long way to a certified product from the Food and Drug Administration for Human. Niklason and her team spent more than a decade in isolating vascular cells from donors to human organs and tissues. They tested cells of more than 700 donors and found that among the five of these donors were the most efficient in growth and expansion of the laboratory. Niklason says Humacyte now has enough cells that have been switched from these five donors to make between 500,000 and a million blood vessels designed.

The company is currently making ships in batches of 200, using a specially designed polymer scalp, specially designed with a length of 42 cm and a thickness of 6 millimeters. Staff is placed in individual bags and a seed of millions of donor cells. Then the bags go to the school’s incubator to soak in a two -month nutrient bath. While the tissues grow, it secretes collagen and other proteins that provide structural support. In the end, the polymer scaffold dissolves and the cells are washed with a special solution. What remains is “non -cellular” flexible tissue in the form of a blood vessel. Since it does not contain live human cells, it will not cause rejection when implanted in a patient.

Anton Sido, head of the American College of Surgeons and Vascular Surgery, says with Humacyte.