With the University of Pittsburgh’s development of a cell-free, biodegradable artery graft comes a potentially transformative change in coronary artery bypass surgeries: Within 90 days after surgery, the patient will have a regenerated artery with no trace of synthetic graft materials left in the body.
Research published highlights work led by principal investigator Yadong Wang, a professor in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering and School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery, who designed grafts that fully harness the body’s regenerative capacity. This new approach is a philosophical shift from the predominant cell-centred approaches in tissue engineering of blood vessels.
‘The host site, the artery in this case, is an excellent source of cells and provides a very efficient growth environment,’ said Wang. ‘This is what inspired us to skip the cell culture altogether and create these cell-free synthetic grafts.’
Wang and fellow researchers, Wei Wu, a former Pitt postdoctoral associate (now a postdoctoral associate at Yale University), and Robert Allen, a PhD student in bioengineering, designed the graft with three properties in mind. First, they chose a graft material

University of Iowa researchers have determined that thigh size in obese people is a reason their hip implants are more likely to fail.
In a study, the team simulated hip dislocations as they occur in humans and determined that increased thigh girth creates hip instability in morbidly obese patients (those with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40). The researchers propose that surgeons modify surgical procedures to minimise the chance of dislocation in obese patients and consider other designs for hip replacement implants.
‘We have shown that morbidly obese patients

When surgeons operate to remove a tumour, determining exactly where to cut can be tricky. Ideally, the entire tumour should be removed while leaving a continuous layer of healthy tissue, but current techniques for locating the tumours during surgery are imprecise. Now a multidisciplinary team from the University of California, San Diego, is developing an alternate means of precisely tagging breast cancer tumours for removal or targeted destruction.

Breast cancer is the most common female cancer in the U.S., and the main cause of death in women ages 40-59, according to UptoDate, an information service for clinical physicians. Over a lifetime, 1 in 8 women in the U.S. is expected to develop breast cancer. Despite great strides in survival, there is trauma associated not only with the disease, but also with its treatment. Many women want to avoid a full mastectomy, but conventional breast-conserving approaches, such as lumpectomy, can be arduous. Up to 25 % of lumpectomies require a second surgery to excise the entire tumour.

The UCSD team is working on a better method for tagging tumours that should reduce the need for follow-up surgeries. The researchers developed iron-doped

A new study suggests that echocardiography be included as part of screenings to help identify student athletes with heart problems that could lead to sudden death.
The Cincinnati Children

Jonathan Friedberg, M.D.A University of Rochester Medical Center study challenges treatment guidelines for early stage follicular lymphoma, concluding that six different therapies can bring a remission, particularly if the patient is carefully examined and staged at diagnosis.
The research underlines the fact that when cancer strikes, modern patients and their oncologists across the United States are taking many diverse treatment paths when there is scant data to support one method over another. This study suggests that the old standard approach