In a massive technological breakthrough that could be used to treat diseases like diabetes, cancer and more, researchers at the University of British Columbia have successfully grown human blood vessels in petri dishes for the first time.
“We managed for the first time to grow human blood vessels from stem cells, using advanced bioengineering over many years of trials and error”, said Josef Penninger, the director of the Life Sciences Institute at UBC to Digital Trends.
According to him, “The capillary blood vessels look, smell, and taste like human blood vessels: Hence we call them blood vessel organoids … I think we could use the blood vessel organoids as transplants to enhance wound healing, giving patients back ‘young’ blood vessels”.
Image Courtesy: IMBA