Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Blocked blood vessels are among the most common causes of death among people living in industrialized part of the world, and they are typically treated by either using stents to force the blood vessel open or by transplanting one from another part of the body.
Researchers from the Vienna University of Technology and Vienna Medical University have come up with a new treatment, however. They have developed artificial blood vessels out of a special elastomer material that encourages the body to replace them with real, natural blood vessels. Over time, they break down and are replaced by regenerated vessels.
According to Engadget, the technique has already been successfully tested in trials involving a rat subject. Less than six months after it was implanted into the rodent, the researchers’ artificial vascular prostheses had broken down and were replaced by an actual blood vessel.
In a statement, Helga Bergmeister of the Vienna Medical University said that she and her fellow researchers “did not find any aneurysms, thrombosis, or inflammation,” and that cells that had “colonized the vascular prostheses” and “turned the artificial constructs into natural body tissue.” This worked faster than expected, meaning the implants can be made to degrade faster.
Creating vascular prostheses from biodegradable polymers
The universities behind this study joined forces to investigate options for new materials that could be used to create the prosthetic vessels, and according to Engadget, they ultimately opted for a type of polymers known as thermoplastic polyurethanes. The researchers spun this material in an electrical field to create miniature tubes suitable for implantation.
“The wall of these artificial blood vessels is very similar to that of natural ones,” Heinz Schima of the Medical University of Vienna explained. Since the material is slightly porous, it allows a trace amount of blood to pass through, thus enriching the wall with growth factors, encouraging the migration of endogenous cells.
Afterwards, it’s only a matter of time before the body is able to build a biological replacement for the artificial vascular prostheses. While there is still a lot of work to be done in the field, and more clinical trials need to be conducted before the synthetic blood vessels can be implanted in a human, the team is hopeful that their technique will eventually be usable in a clinical setting.
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