Cells used to create functional blood vessels

John Carroll — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:39:46 -0400

For the first time, researchers have used progenitor cells from donors to grow functional human blood vessels in mice. And by speeding the process, the team of investigators says that the science could give birth to a non-surgical substitute for heart bypass procedures. The work is reported in Circulation Research: Journal of the American Heart Association.

"What we are most interested in right now is speeding up the vascularization (the formation of blood vessels)," Bischoff said. "We see very good and extensive vasculature in seven days and we'd like to see that in 24 or 48 hours. If you have an ischemic tissue, it's dying tissue, so the faster you can establish blood flow the better."

If researchers can develop ways to speed the growth of the vessels, non-surgical cardiac bypass procedures could potentially grow new vessels around those blocked by atherosclerosis.

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