Professor Cho Dong-woo's (ME) team produced a 3-dimensional bio-blood vessel which can be naturally fused with body vessels by developing a bio-ink derived from the vascular tissue.
The researchers created a hollow bio-blood vessel with components extracted from a human’s blood vessels. When these blood vessels are transplanted into the body, they are fused with healthy peripheral blood vessels, and various nutrients including blood are actively supplied to the graft site.
It also includes a system in which drugs are gradually released, so it is expected to increase the success rate of transplantation by putting in drugs to help revitalize blood vessels. It has been shown that the transplantation of bio-blood vessels into ischemic rats with closed-loop blood vessels has an effect of preventing leg necrosis by about 7 times compared with a group without any treatment.
Professor Jang Ji-nah of the research team said, “3D cell printing technology using vascular tissues can make blood vessels in a desired shape, and it will enable various blood vessel transplantations such as making arteries by adding multiple layers of blood vessel walls in the future.”