If you know anyone who’s had a heart by-pass operation, you’ve probably been shown the scar on their leg where surgeons removed a vein to use in the operation.
But soon these scars could be extinct. Last week US scientists announced they can ‘grow’ blood vessels from skin cells in a laboratory.
Apparently, the blood vessels are made by taking a half-centimetre square sliver of skin from the back of patients’ hands. Nice...
These are used to create sheets of tissue which are wound round a cylinder before being treated to fuse the layers together to form a blood vessel.
Clinical trials at Papworth hospital in Cambridge will discover if these blood vessels can be used in heart by-pass surgery... but the implications of this development are huge.
Will it be possible to replace faulty heart valves with ‘grown’ heart valves rather than titanium or pig valves?
And how close are we to creating ‘disposable’ livers, kidneys and hearts? When one packs up, we simply grow another one...
It looks like the advances will come fast and furious in the next few years, so I recommend you keep an eye on this area...
I’ll be back next Monday.
Until then,
Simon Munton
Profit Watch
