Photo: Cytograft
You’re looking at a “rope” made from braided human parts. No,
it’s not a premise for a new Syfy movie, rather a new tissue engineering
technique by biotech firm Cytograft:
… the biological strands could be used to weave blood vessel
patches and grafts that a patient’s body would readily accept for wound
repair. The process is faster and could be more cost-effective than
other methods of producing biological tissue replacements. […]Cytograft’s technique draws upon a long history of medical textiles,
which are typically produced with synthetic fibers like polyester. “Creating
textiles is an ancient and powerful technique, and combining it with
biomaterials is exciting because it has so much more versatility than
the sheet method,” says Christopher Breuer, a surgeon, scientist,
and tissue engineer at the Yale School of Medicine. “The notion
of making blood vessels or more complex shapes like heart valves, or
patches for the heart, is much easier to do with fibers,” he says.
“If you can make fibers of any length, then there is no limit to
the size or shape that you can make.”
And that’s a better than any science fiction tale you can weave: Link
– via Kurzweil
Read more here:
Weaving Blood Vessels
