Researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed a bio-artificial blood vessel that simulates the functions and properties of blood vessels to verify the success of implantable artificial organs before transplanting them into the human body.

A KIST research team, led by Doctor Kim Young-mi, has developed an artificial blood vessel that can predict organ transplant results.
A KIST research team, led by Doctor Kim Young-mi, has developed an artificial blood vessel that can predict organ transplant results.

“The reality is that the number of donated organs from donors to treat diseases or injuries is insufficient compared to the demand for organ transplantation therapy,” the team said. “Therefore, recently there have been lot researches into safely transplanting organs from animals other than humans.”

The team stressed that the medical field already uses pig organs, such as heart valves and corneas, for organ transplantation in clinical practice as they do not cause diseases such as tuberculosis or AIDS, which can appear when using organs from chimpanzees or monkeys, and are inexpensive to mass-produce.

When a patient receives a transplant from an animal, however, their body can cause an immune rejection reaction that destroys that tissue.

“To overcome this problem, global researchers make efforts to develop pigs for organ transplantation by genetically manipulating various factors that cause immune rejection,” the team said. “Despite the ongoing research, the development is slow due to limited methods to verify whether the developed pig organs are suitable for the human body.”

As a solution, the team, led by Doctor Kim Young-mi at the university, molded a liquid hydrogel into a tube-shaped frame made of collagen and fibrin, the main components of blood vessels, as a base and hardened it at 37 Celsius degrees before compressing it to mimic the blood circulation in actual blood vessels.

“Unlike existing artificial blood vessel structure where researchers had to culture vascular endothelial cells for seven to 21 days, the developed method allowed vascular endothelial cells to stably attach within a short time, making it possible to produce blood vessels within three days,” the team said.

The new artificial blood vessel platform could help conduct both in vitro and in vivo experiments using animal models. As a result of evaluating immune rejection through in vitro and in vivo experiments, the blood vessel sample manufactured with a specific gene manipulated by the research team suppressed acute immune rejection well.

“The circulatory system artificial blood vessel platform can create a microenvironment similar to the circulatory system of our body as it uses a similar structure to real blood vessels and also simulates the physical and biological properties of blood vessels,” Doctor Kim said.

As the manufacturing method is simple, the team expects it will have great commercial utility as a preclinical tool for vascular-related new drugs or immunotherapy developed by companies or hospitals, he added.

Science Advances has published the result of the study.

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