Scientists grow perfect human blood vessels in a petri dish
January 20, 2019
- Scientists have managed to grow perfect human blood vessels as organoids in a petri dish for the first time. The breakthrough engineering technology dramatically advances research of vascular diseases like diabetes, identifying a key pathway to potentially prevent changes to blood vessels -- a major cause of death and morbidity among those with diabetes.
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Diabetic blood vessel changes in patients and human vascular organoids. The basement membrane (green) around the blood vessels (red) is massively enlarged in diabetic patients (white arrows). The human vascular organoids that were made “diabetic” in the laboratory can now be used as diabetic model to identify new treatments.Scientists have managed to grow perfect human blood vessels as organoids in a petri dish for the first time.
The breakthrough engineering technology, outlined in a new study published today in Nature, dramatically advances research of vascular diseases like diabetes, identifying a key pathway to potentially prevent changes to blood vessels -- a major cause of death and morbidity among those with diabetes.
An organoid is a three-dimensional structure grown from stem cells that mimics an organ and can be used to study aspects of that organ in a petri dish.
"Being able to build human blood vessels as organoids from stem cells is a game changer," said the study's senior author Josef Penninger, the Canada 150 Research Chair in Functional Genetics, director of the Life Sciences Institute at UBC and founding director of the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA).