Scientists got steps closer to getting the body to produce its own replacement blood vessel.
A team of scientists discovered the parts of the immune system could be suppressed to increase the chances of vascular graft success, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology reported. The researchers demonstrated that controlling the reaction of killer cells, platelets and the acute inflammatory response to the graft could prevent the narrowing of the implant, which is called stenosis and is the cause of most graft failures.
"Our aim is to extend these findings toward the development of a safe and effective tissue engineered vascular grafts for the management of congenital heart disease," said Cameron Best, a researcher involved in the work from the Tissue Engineering and Surgical Research Department at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "We hope that our translational approach is applicable to other areas of regenerative medicine and a model for investigators in the field."
The researchers made the their findings by looking at immunodeficient mice that had a blunted acute inflammatory response and were given these implants. Normal mice were treated with either a natural killer cell depleting antibody or anti-platelet drugs. The findings revealed the rate of stenosis in both models was half of what was seen in the untreated mice.
"When most people think of regenerative medicine, they think of growing new hearts or kidneys," said Gerald Weissmann, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "What most people don't realize is that just being able to engineer new blood vessels would go a long way toward saving lives and alleviating suffering. This research is significant because it identifies what goes wrong with today's engineered blood vessels, and reveals a solution on what to do to fix this problem."
