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| A girl has received a vein transplant using a blood vessel grown from her own stem cells View Photo |
A 10-year-old girl has been given a vein transplant using a blood vessel grown from her own stem cells.
It is the first time such an operation has been undertaken, marking a milestone in tissue engineering.
Similar techniques may offer hope for at-risk patients undergoing bypass surgery.
The girl had a blocked hepatic portal vein, which drains blood from the gut and spleen to the liver.
Without treatment, the condition can lead to serious complications including internal bleeding, spleen enlargement and even death.
Traditionally bypass surgery has been used to restore portal blood flow, using sections of vein taken from other parts of the body. This can cause other problems and is not always successful.
The new technique involved growing a new section of portal vein from the girl's own bone marrow stem cells.
First, a nine centimetre segment of groin vein was taken from a deceased donor and stripped of cellular tissue, leaving a tubular protein "scaffold". Maturing stem cells were "seeded" into the scaffold, which two weeks later was implanted into the girl's body.
Normal blood flow was restored, but after a year the graft had to be lengthened with another piece of vein made from stem cells.
The girl has remained well since and even managed to take part in gymnastics, the Swedish team reported in the latest online edition of The Lancet medical journal.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/vein-grown-using-girls-stem-cells-230326541.html
