First Blood Vessels Grown From Patient's Skin for Hemodialysis Fistula

Via USA Today:

Two kidney dialysis patients from Argentina have received the world's first blood vessels grown in a lab dish from snippets of their own skin, a promising step toward helping people with a variety of diseases...

People with certain chronic conditions, such as dialysis patients, often run out of healthy vessels.

Growing them involves taking a piece of skin and a vein, less than a quarter-inch square, from the back of the hand. It's placed in a lab dish and nurtured with growth enhancers that help it produce substances like collagen and elastin, which give tissues their shape and texture...

Sheets of this tissue are produced — "You can cover your desk with a sheet," said Todd McAllister, a scientist and co-founder of the company — and then stacked and rolled into vessels 6 to 8 inches long...

Patients often run out of healthy vessels that can be cut out and moved to form a shunt, and synthetic vessels often don't last long and can develop complications...

The woman's new vessel has withstood needle punctures three times a week for six months and the man's, for almost three.

Technorati Tags: Dialysis, Cytograft, Tissue Engineering