Patients Get Lab-Grown Blood Vessels From Donor Skin Cells

Tissue-engineered blood vessel (Cytograft Tissue Engineering)

For the first time, according to the American Heart Association, human blood vessels grown in the lab from donor skin cells have been successfully implanted into patients. The findings were presented today (27 June) in the American Heart Association’s Emerging Science Series webinar.

The research involves the work of Cytograft Tissue Engineering Inc. in Novato, California. Study lead author and company CEO Todd McAllister says the company’s methods, “could allow hundreds of thousands of patients to be treated from one master cell line.”

The authors say these created blood vessels could — if confirmed by future testing — improve the process and affordability of kidney dialysis. The grafts also have the potential to be used in lower limb bypass to route blood around diseased arteries, to repair congenital heart defects in pediatric patients, and to fix damaged arteries in soldiers, who might otherwise lose a limb.

The tissue-engineered blood vessels, produced from sheets of cultured skin cells rolled around temporary support structures, were used to create access shunts between arteries and veins in the arm for kidney dialysis in three patients. These shunts, which connect an artery to a vein, provide access to the blood for dialysis. The engineered vessels were about a foot long with a diameter of 4.8 millimeters.

At follow-up exams up to eight months after implantation, none of the patients had developed an immune reaction to the implants, and the vessels withstood the high pressure and frequent needle punctures required for dialysis. The researchers say that shunts created from patients’ own vessels or synthetic materials are prone to failure.

Investigators previously showed that using vessels individually created from a patient’s own skin cells reduced the rate of shunt complications more than two-fold over a three-year period. The availability of off-the-shelf vessels, according to the authors, could avoid the expense and lengthy process of creating custom vessels for each patient, making the technique more feasible for widespread use.

The company says a larger, randomized trial of the grafts is under way for kidney dialysis, and human trials have started to assess the safety and effectiveness of these grafts for lower-limb bypass.

Read more: Stem Cells Used to Grow Blood Vessel for Surgery

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