In a breakthrough development, a study led by a team of scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine have been successful to pioneer a technique for manufacturing functioning human blood vessels. Further, the team demonstrated these blood vessels can transmit blood in lab-developed model tumors and organs.
With the devise of this technique, it will enable disease modeling. Besides this, it will assist the future production of human transplantable organs and finding new precision drugs to treat cancer.
A key protein could rejuvenate adult human endothelial cells, find the scientists whose study is published in Sep 9 edition of the Nature. And, the protein could return endothelial cells to a malleable state in which they develop readily and conform to surrounding tissues.
Technique enables engineer of Tissue-specific blood vessels
“The discovery of the technique allows to engineer a tissue-specific network of functional blood vessels. This is to nurture and support various model organs, along with the development of human pancreatic islets that can be transplanted,” said the senior author of the study. Furthermore, the technique will also enable to interpret how cancerous blood vessels obtain their abnormal features, thereby permitting development of new druggable targets for tumors.
Clinically, developing therapeutics and repair or replace of injured organs faces hurdles due to shortage of donor organs and drawbacks in animal models of human diseases. And, transplanted organs may fail due to poor blood supply. In addition, blood vessels in each organ and tumor are different and success for restoring damaged organs or targeting cancerous blood vessel requires an understanding how to customize blood vessels.
Meanwhile, currently used ‘organ-on-chip’ models have shortcomings. This is because these technologies do not allow blood vessels to interact with other cell types and their environment.