Scientists are hoping to expand the spare parts offering for humans from knee cartilage and skin grafts to lab-grown heart valves, lungs and more, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Researchers have succeeded in bringing some to market – including knee cartilage and skin grafts − but advances for more complicated anatomy have been slow.
However, The Wall Street Journal reports that scientists are gaining ground in tissue engineering to deal with circulatory-system problems.
Humacyte, in Durham, North Carolina, 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.
Humacyte has already implanted more than 500 of its blood vessels in humans.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Dr Allan Kirk, chairman of the Department of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine, as saying: “The brilliance here is the realisation that you don’t need to grow the blood vessel, you just need to put the scaffolding down, and the body will do the rest.”
[Image: Muzamil Hussain from Pixabay]