Tissue engineering may offer bypass patients a new source of “spare parts” for the heart.

California researchers have transformed small patches of heart patients’ skin into functioning vessels potentially strong enough to act as detours for blood in the patients’ own diseased hearts.

The completed vessel is stronger than the most commonly used bypass graft, and resists clotting.

The research is one of several projects underway aimed at treating cardiovascular disease by building or regenerating damaged tissue with autologous cells — living material from the patient’s body.

Gary Francis, M.D., director of the Coronary Intensive Care Unit at the Cleveland Clinic, cautions that it may be years before the experimental procedures enter general clinical practice. “There’s intense interest in reconstructing tissue,” he says, “and it deserves a lot of support. But it’s a very long road from these ex vivo [laboratory]…

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