CardioExchange Archive

Building a Better Vessel with Stem Cells: It’s still a long way from reaching clinical practice, but tissue engineers are making serious advances in their efforts to grow bypass grafts using stem cells. At the AHA’s Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Annual Conference now underway in San Francisco, Stephen McIlhenny reported on the successful in vivo test of grafts created from adult adipose-derived stem cells that were attached to the lumen of decellularized vein scaffolds. “The significant finding is that we can build a blood vessel from donor tissue and an animal’s own adult stem cells. Potentially, patients requiring bypass surgery could receive optimized grafts that would reduce their future complications,” McIlhenny said in an AHA press release.