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An international team of scientists claims to have accomplished an unprecedented feat: creating three-dimensional replicas of human blood vessels grown in a petri dish. The tour de force, detailed in a new study published Wednesday (16) in Nature will allow us to better understand and study disabling diseases such as diabetes.
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People with diabetes – a disease characterized by high blood sugar levels – often develop poor circulation. Heart attacks, strokes and even amputation of a limb may possibly occur as a result. Scientists can use animals, including mice, to study the progression of diabetes. But these mouse models do not capture every aspect of diabetes we see in humans, including its damage to blood vessels.
Ideally, it would be good to see the effects of a disease on a disease as similar as humans. The small organs developed in the laboratory, or "organoids", as scientists call them, have emerged as a tempting option to do just that.
However, the researchers behind the present study say that we did not really have the human blood vessels recreated in the lab. But those made by this research team are "perfect," according to a press release from the University of British Columbia.
"Our organoids are very similar to the capillaries of human blood, even at the molecular level, and we can now use them to: study the diseases of blood vessels directly in human tissues," said the lead author of the Study, Reimer Wimmer, postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular Biotechnology Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) in Vienna, in a statement.
Organoids were cultured from stem cells, immature cells capable of transforming into several types of cells. As in humans, replicas have been found to have a network of basement membrane-covered blood capillaries, a kind of connective tissue that helps to maintain and structure vessels.
Wimmer and his team went further with their aftershocks. transplanted into mice without an immune system (a step that would prevent them from rejecting the donor tissue). The organoids were easily transported to their new home, connecting to the native circulatory system of the mouse, and then developed into a network of arteries, small veins and arterioles (limbs). an artery that flow into the capillaries).
In addition, they were able to recreate "diabetic" blood vessels characterized by thickening of the basement membrane. In the context of experiments on mice and previous research, they have highlighted the essential role played by a signaling pathway involving NOTCH-3 protein in creating the observed thickening in blood vessels people with diabetes.
According to the researchers, the results of these experiments show that these vessels could be a better model for studying diabetes than for blocking another NOTCH-3 targeting enzyme, γ-secretase, which also seemed to prevent such damage. traditional mice. And because of the importance of our circulatory system for the rest of the body, the potential of these replicas developed in the lab far exceeds diabetes research.
"Every organ in our body is connected to the circulatory system," said the author. Josef Penninger, founding director of the IMBA and current director of the Institute of Life Sciences of the University of British Columbia, said in a statement. "Stem cell vascular organoids are a model of watershed management – allowing us to discover etiologies and treatments for a wide range of vascular diseases, from diabetes to Alzheimer's disease to cardiovascular disease, wound healing or stroke. "
Blood vessels are only the last frontier in the development of organelles. Scientists have already created miniature versions of the stomach, lungs and even brain development. These organoids were used to study the effects of cystic fibrosis on zika virus.
[Nature via IMBA]
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