A research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is engineering self-assembling human blood vessels that exhibit the symptoms of common cardiac and vascular conditions, like aneurisms and blockages, work that may provide a better way for scientists to test the effectiveness of new medications and, potentially, speed up the development of more effective treatments for life-threatening diseases.
Biomedical engineer Marsha Rolle has spent more than a decade developing a method for building engineered blood vessels. With support from the NIH, she is using her innovative methods to create diseased blood vessels, which could serve as better models for testing new medications and help speed the development of better treatments for cardiac and vascular conditions.