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Engineered microvessels provide a 3d test bed for human diseases by efwegbe erergeer
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Engineered microvessels provide a 3d test bed for human diseases |
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Mice and monkeys don't develop diseases in the same way that humansdo. Nevertheless, after medical researchers have studied humancells in a Petri dish, they have little choice but to move on tostudy mice and primates. University of Washington bioengineers havedeveloped the first structure to grow small human blood vessels,creating a 3-D test bed that offers a better way to study disease,test drugs and perhaps someday grow human tissues for transplant. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences. "In clinical research you just draw a blood sample," said firstauthor Ying Zheng, a UW research assistant professor ofbioengineering.
"But with this, we can really dissect what happensat the interface between the blood and the tissue. We can start tolook at how these diseases start to progress and develop efficienttherapies." Zheng first built the structure out of the body's most abundantprotein, collagen, while working as a postdoctoral researcher atCornell University. She created tiny channels and injected thishoneycomb with human endothelial cells, which line human bloodvessels. During a period of two weeks, the endothelial cells grew throughoutthe structure and formed tubes through the mold's rectangularchannels, just as they do in the human body. similar system could supply blood to engineered tissue beforetransplant into the body.
After joining the UW last year, Zheng collaborated with the PugetSound Blood Center to see how this research platform would work totransport real blood. The engineered vessels could transport human blood smoothly, evenaround corners. And when treated with an inflammatory compound thevessels developed clots, similar to what real vessels do when theybecome inflamed. The system also shows promise as a model for tumor progression.Cancer begins as a hard tumor but secretes chemicals that causenearby vessels to bulge and then sprout. Eventually tumor cells usethese blood vessels to penetrate the bloodstream and colonize newparts of the body.
When the researchers added to their system a signaling protein forvessel growth that's overabundant in cancer and other diseases, newblood vessels sprouted from the originals. These new vessels wereleaky, just as they are in human cancers. "With this system we can dissect out each component or we can putthem together to look at a complex problem. That's a nice thing-wecan isolate the biophysical, biochemical or cellular components.How do endothelial cells respond to blood flow or to differentchemicals, how do the endothelial cells interact with theirsurroundings, and how do these interactions affect the vessels'barrier function? We have a lot of degrees of freedom," Zheng said.
The system could also be used to study malaria, which becomes fatalwhen diseased blood cells stick to the vessel walls and block smallopenings, cutting off blood supply to the brain, placenta or othervital organs. "I think this is a tremendous system for studying how blood clotsform on vessels walls, how the vessel responds to shear stress andother mechanical and chemical factors, and for studying the manydiseases that affect small blood vessels," said co-author Dr. JoseLopez, a professor of biochemistry and hematology at UW Medicineand chief scientific officer at the Puget Sound Blood Center. Future work will use the system to further explore blood vesselinteractions that involve inflammation and clotting. Zheng is alsopursuing tissue engineering as a member of the UW's Center forCardiovascular Biology and the Institute for Stem Cell andRegenerative Medicine.
Other co-authors are UW physics senior Samuel Totorica; AbrahamStroock, Michael Craven, Nak Won Choi, Michael Craven, AnthonyDiaz-Santana and Claudia Fischbach at Cornell; Junmei Chen at thePuget Sound Blood Center; and Barbara Hempstead at Weill CornellMedical College. I am a professional writer from Home Appliances, which contains a great deal of information about cuisinart dcc 2000 , hair brush manufacturer, welcome to visit!
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