Lab-grown blood vessels could soon become reality

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Scientists hope body tissues grown in labs will become a familiar sight in medicine. Researchers around the world are working to grow heart valves, lungs and more from human cells.

They have succeeded in bringing some to market such as knee cartilage and skin grafts, but advances for more complicated anatomy have been slow-going for years. Now scientists are gaining ground in tissue engineering that could help a host of people who deal with circulatory-system problems. One of the companies furthest along is Humacyte, a Durham, N.C.-based biotech that makes lab-grown blood vessels, which could help patients with traumatic injuries along with those who use catheters for dialysis or suffer pain from narrowed circulation to the limbs.

Using new, lab-grown blood vessels to replace the old would offer surgeons a drastically different method than today’s to help patients whose arteries have been torn in explosions or car crashes, for example. Doctors typically go with synthetic grafts made of plastic, which can cause clotting and other problems, or a patient’s own blood vessels cut from a different part of the body. “This is spare parts for people," said Dr.

Laura Niklason, chief executive of Humacyte. The company’s blood vessels, which have thick walls similar to arteries, can also replace veins, though surgeons rarely repair or replace those. The company starts the process with a 40-centimeter-long tube of degradable plastic mesh in a bag filled with nutrition for cells, such as proteins, growth factors, vitamins, minerals and glucose.