Growing blood vessels for use in cardiovascular surgeries is a tricky business. Vessels can be created from a patient's own cells, but the process is costly and takes up to nine months. Now researchers have devised a method that can churn out tens of vessels per donor that could then be stored until needed.

Shannon Dahl at Humacyte in Durham, North Carolina, and her collaborators grew their vessels by introducing the cells into scaffolds made of polyglycolic acid. Once these vascular grafts had grown in a bioreactor, the team stripped them of cells, reducing the likelihood of the vessels eliciting an immune response in the recipient.

The resulting collagen-tube grafts had similar properties to normal human blood vessels. When tested in a small number of baboons and dogs, most of the grafts remained open over test periods ranging between one month and one year.

Sci. Transl. Med. 3, 68ra9 (2011)