In Flesh-Engineering Breakthrough, Lab-Grown Tissue Can Finally Grow Its Own Blood Vessels
Synthetic Blood Vessels two types of cells, which were tagged with fluorescent dye, organized themselves into a functioning capillary networks within 72 hours. Rice University Tissue engineers have come a long way in recent years, fabricating human tissue Lego blocks, artificial kidney cells, sight-restoring bio-synthetic corneas and more. But no one has figured out how to grow large amounts of transplantable tissue in the lab, because it's too difficult to keep it alive. Texas researchers may have an answer: Use a common laxative to grow some blood vessels. Researchers from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine grew a system of and capillaries on a nontoxic plastic matrix. They were able to control where cells grew in their plastic gel. Previous attempts to grow blood vessels in artificial tissue have involved driving a nail into an electrically charged plastic block, which creates a feathery network of tubes that could become...