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10-year-old gets blood vessel from stem cells

For the first time, scientists led by an Indian-origin researcher have successfully replaced a major blood vessel in a 10-year-old girl with a vein grown in a lab using her own stem cells.

The pioneering transplant, published in The Lancet, marks a further advance in growing body parts in laboratory and offers hopes for patients who lack suitable veins for dialysis or bypass surgery.

In the landmark research, a team from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden took a vein from a dead man, stripped of its own cells and then bathed in stem cells from the girl, who was suffering from portal vein obstruction.

There was a 'striking' improvement in her quality of life after the transplantation, Prof Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, who led the research, said.

'This is the future for tissue engineering, where we can make tailor-made organs in the lab,' Sumitran-Holgersson said.

According to researchers, the hepatic portal vein, from which the girl was suffering, drains the blood from the intestines and spleen to the liver, and blockage can cause serious complications such as lethal variceal bleeding, enlarged spleen, developmental retardation, and even death.

To date, attempts to restore portal blood flow using umbilical veins and artificial grafts to build a bridge around the blockage [called meso Rex bypass] have had mixed success.

In the new study, the Swedish team took a 9cm segment of iliac [groin] vein from a live human donor and removed all living cells, leaving a tube consisting of just the protein scaffolding.

This scaffolding was injected with stem cells obtained from the girl's own bone marrow. Two weeks after seeding, the graft was re-implanted during a meso Rex bypass procedure.
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