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The new approach involved taking approximately 2 tablespoons of blood, the minimum quantity needed to obtain enough stem cells, from each patient. Surprisingly, the ex- traction procedure worked perfectly the first time.
In addition, the blood accelerated the growth of the new vein. The entire process took only one week, com- pared to the month required with bone marrow stem cells. Sumitran-
Holdersson said this is because blood contains substances that naturally promote growth.
She hopes the new approach can be exploited more fully in the future to reduce growth times even more. She believes advances in the process can benefit other patient populations, such as patients with myocardial infarction, and others who need new blood vessels.11
Drilling in bone marrow is very painful, so harvesting stem cells from blood seemed a good alternative.
— Suchitra Sumitran-Holdersson, Professor of Transplantation Biology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital
The BioP3 prototype was made mostly from parts available at Home Depot for less than $200. —Brown University
provements to BioP3. Improvements include speeding up the process—the current version is manually operated, and building microtissues has been a time-consuming process. Morgan an- ticipates future versions of the BioP3 to be automated, and work indepen- dently and precisely to build tissues and organs.10
Blood Vessels Grown from
Blood in One Week
Technology for creating new tissues from stem cells took yet another leap in 2014, when researchers published a proof-of-concept report of their success at generating brand new hu- man blood vessels from two table- spoons of blood. Even more remark- able — the new blood vessels were created in seven days.
Scientists Suchitra Sumitran-Hold- ersson and Michael Olausson, both professors at Sahlgrenska University in Sweden, conducted the break- through process in 2012.
Three patients, all young children, were missing a vein that goes from the gastrointestinal tract to the liver. Pro- fessor Suchitra Sumitran-Holdersson said they developed the new technique because drilling in bone marrow, the conventional source for stem cell har- vesting, is very painful, so harvesting stem cells from blood seemed a good alternative. The fact that the patients were so young fueled her passion to discover a new approach.
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3. National Cancer Institute, CAR T-Cell Therapy: Engineering Patients’ Immune Cells to Treat Their Cancers, October 16, 2014, accessed January
2015 at cancer.gov
uphs.upenn.edu
10.News from Brown, New technology makes tissues, someday maybe organs, December 22, 2014, accessed January 2015 at news.brown.edu 11.Science Daily, Making personalized blood vessels from a patient’s blood sample, October 24, 2014, accessed January 2015 at sciencedaily.com
Sonia Collins, Immunotherapy Brings New Hope to Cancer Fight, November 4, 2014, accessed January 2015 at webmd.com
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