Dec. 9, 2011 Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and
nanoparticle technology, researchers from Yale have devised a
way to monitor the growth of laboratory-engineered blood vessels
after they have been implanted in patients. This advance
represents an important step toward ensuring that blood vessels,
and possibly other tissues engineered from a patient's own
biological material, are taking hold and working as expected.
Until now, there has been no way to monitor the growth and
progress of engineered tissues once they were implanted. The
research was published in the December 2011 issue of the FASEB
Journal. "We hope that the important findings from our study
will serve as a valuable tool for physicians and scientists
working to better understand the biological mechanisms involved
in tissue engineering," said Christopher K. Breuer, M.D., co-
author of the study from the Interdepartmental Program in
Vascular Biology and Therapeutics at Yale University School of
Medicine in New Haven, CT. "Resulting advances w