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Written By: ANI | Updated : June 10, 2013 12:16 PM IST
Washington, June 9 (ANI): Doctors at Duke University Hospital created a bioengineered blood vessel and implanted it into the arm of a patient with end-stage kidney disease. The procedure the first US clinical trial to test the safety and effectiveness of the bioengineered blood vessel) is a milestone in the field of tissue engineering.
The new vein is an off-the-shelf, human cell-based product with no biological properties that would cause organ rejection. Using technology developed at Duke and at a spin-off company it started called Humacyte, the vein is engineered by cultivating donated human cells on a tubular scaffold to form a vessel. The vessel is then cleansed of the qualities that might trigger an immune response.
In pre-clinical tests, the veins have performed better than other synthetic and animal-based implants. 'It's exciting to see something you've worked on for so long become a reality. We talk about translational technology developing ideas from the laboratory to clinical practice and this only happens where there is the multi-disciplinary support and collaboration to cultivate it,' Jeffrey H. Lawson, M.D., PhD, a vascular surgeon and vascular biologist at Duke Medicine who helped develop the technology and performed the implantation, said.
