Kidney failure patient receives first genetically engineered blood vessel in US.

Bloomberg News (6/7, Cortez) reports, “A 62-year-old Virginia man with kidney failure received the first genetically engineered blood vessel in the U.S., a vein that may improve his dialysis treatments and pave the way for future tissue transplants.” This marks “the first time” that physicians “have implanted an ‘off-the-shelf’ tissue graft in the U.S.”

        The Raleigh (NC) News & Observer (6/7, Rupp, 130K) reports that the “procedure was the first of 20 initial U.S. trials for the bioengineered blood vessel, at Duke and two other medical centers.” The News & Observer points out that “the first vessels were implanted in humans in December in Poland and used for dialysis in February.”

        MedPage Today (6/7, Laino) reports, “In preclinical tests, the tissue-engineered veins performed better than other synthetic implants, said Jeffrey H. Lawson, MD, PhD, a vascular surgeon at Duke Medicine who helped develop the technology.”