New Delhi: What if you get to know that your body tissues can be grown in labs now, how would you react? Well, this is going to be a reality soon as scientists are hoping that body tissues grown in labs may become a familiar sight in medicine. As per reports, scientists have grown arteries using human cells to treat injured patients even better. The procedure has already been effective in Ukrainian soldiers.
According to The Wall Street Journal report, researchers worldwide are currently working to grow heart valves, lungs and other forms of human cells. The researchers have successfully brought some to market like knee cartilage and skin grafts but it still needs more research to conclude. For conducting the study, the scientists are gaining ground in tissue engineering that may help a good number of people who suffer from circulatory-system problems. The company who is conducting the study is one those companies that are furthest along Humacyte, a Durham, N.C.-based biotech that develops lab-grown blood vessels, which could help patients with traumatic injuries along with the ones who use catheters for dialysis or experience pain from narrowed circulation to the limbs.
Benefits of the lab-grown blood vessels
The report further noted that using new, lab-grown blood vessels may help replace the old and this may offer surgeons a significantly different procedure as compared to today’s to help patients whose arteries have been torn in explosions or car crashes. As a typical procedure, doctors generally use synthetic grafts made of plastic that can cause clotting and other problems or a patient’s blood vessels cut from a different part of the body.
How does the blood vessels are lab-grown?
The company which is manufacturing this starts the process with a 40-centimetre-long tube of degradable plastic mesh in a bag filled with nutrition for cells like proteins, growth factors, vitamins, minerals and glucose. Further, they add the blood-vessel cells from human donors to the bag and keep it for over two months. After this, the plastic scaffold dissolves, while the cells form a human artery complete with the collagen and proteins that give the blood vessels their strength.
Moreover, the humancyte then washes the living cells away with a special detergent and what is left behind is a pale, white tube that feels and works like a blood vessel.
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