More Hope For Heart Patients Now

A new research published in the journal ‘Circulation Research: Journal of the American Heart Association’ says that scientists have been able to grow heart blood vessels in mice. These are similar to the ones that the cardiacdefine surgeons create with by pass operations.

Juan M.Melero-Martin, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston, said that the ultimate aim is to replace heart surgery with injections of laboratory grown cells that would create a space for themselves in the body. He added that, “We are proving the concept in mice that are compromised so that they don’t reject human cells.”

The scientists believe that they can revascularise ischemic tissue. Ischemic tissue is bereft of blood because of blocked arteries or other damage. So, if a patient has a need to vascularise this tissue, cells can be taken from him ahead of time. These can be then grown in the laboratory and injected back into the patient.

It is worth mentioning that the research team did not use stem cells obtained from human embryos. Instead, progenitor cells obtained from blood or bone marrow were used. These cells can grow into full-fledged blood vessel systems in the laboratory mice as seen in the research experiment.

The scientists have found that the best growth of the blood vessels can be obtained from a combination of two kinds of progenitor cells derived from adult blood and bone marrow or umbilical corddefine and bone marrow.

Joyce Bischoff, associate professor of medicine at Harvard and senior author of the report said that, “We need to do a lot more animal studies to test how these cells behave in different tissues.” Currently, the scientists are working on lessening the time needed to grow blood vessels outside the body.