Patients get veins made from cells of donors

Associated Press

Three dialysis patients have received the world’s first blood vessels grown in a lab from donated skin cells. It’s a key step toward creating a supply of ready-to-use arteries and veins that could be used to treat diabetics, soldiers with damaged limbs, people having heart-bypass surgery and others.

The goal is one day to have a refrigerated inventory of these in various sizes and shapes that surgeons could order as needed like bandages and other medical supplies.

The work so far is still early-stage. Three patients in Poland have received the new vessels, which are working well two to eight months later. But doctors are excited because this builds on earlier success in about a dozen patients given blood vessels grown in the lab from their own skin.