We’re closer to ‘engineering’ blood vessels | Hacker News Reader

We’re closer to ‘engineering’ blood vessels

pursuit.unimelb.edu.au

173 pointsgeox94 comments

Quite a while ago now, but I used to work at a tissue engineering lab in London. I was interested in how techniques from procedural design and architecture could be brought across, as actually the design of many of the TE scaffolds seemed very crude.

Blood vessels grow according to growth factors that are released in response to hypoxia, I wanted to try and model them as a space colonisation. I never quite got around to producing the actual structures, but some more details here:

https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/-/media/files/rcs/standards-and-res...

Oh neat- your scaffolding reminds me of Erwin Hauer

"Blood vessels grow according to growth factors that are released in response to hypoxia"

Is this how some people have managed to grow secondary aortic passages naturally and usually without knowing until some cardiac event shows it?

I wonder if I have a bunch given I had untreated severe sleep apnea for 10 years or so.

It is likely.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649685/

> another possible adaptive mechanism of coronary circulation to chronic intermittent ischemia of OSA patients is the development of coronary collaterals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_circulation

You should get a CPAP machine. Is life changing to not feel tired all the time + huge health benefits such as blood pressure etc

Indeed. One family member with a rare desease discovered new blood vessels last week after an internal bleeding. These vessels had developed in the wrong places in the stomach and will be closed again and the normal vessels, which had been blocked by blood clothing, will be unblocked.

In the larger diameter blood vessels, it’s also due to relieving back pressure and finding a path of least resistance. This causes existing pathways to dilate and eventually join together to form a new channel / anastomosis (aortic coarctation is quite an extreme example - because of severe narrowing at the aorta existing blood vessels widen so much they cause notching of the ribs, which is visible on chest x-ray). Things like liver cirrhosis can cause back pressure and dilatation in a similar way.

So just of the top of my head, things that have made mainstream news in the past ~week;

- A Small molecule oral cancer drug kills 100% of solid tumors across 70 evaluated cancer types - LK-99, potentially the first ever room temperature ambient pressure superconductor (unverified as of yet)

Things are looking up

Don't forget growing teeth:

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/05/a-drug-that-makes-t...

odontogenesis is very fascinating... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_tooth_development

even after reading a bunch of articles about many aspects, the cell organisation to produce mineral rods support as scaffold for mineral/enamel surface layers is .. really something

Had teeth growing in petri dishes a while ago; I wonder what happened to those…

That story has been around for at least a decade now.

2011 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110330101038.h...

2017 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/damaged-teeth-reg...

Growing teeth likely would improve peoples lives more than anything else mentioned.

Also need a way do deal with receding gums that doesn't involve hellraiser inspired grafting, sticking, or pinholes.

Rapamycin apparently helps with gun recession

What about the record high ocean temperatures and antartic ice loss?

Measurement errors of course...\s

you win some you lose some

Now we can replace the ice with blood vessels.

At this rate of change anything twenty years out is essentially impossible to estimate.

There are commercial companies working on Fusion power. We may have electrified everything by then, we may have painted the dessert white or we may be totally doomed.

if the super conductor thing fans out we might not even need to wait for fusion to go mainstream to electrify everything. That tech could take 10,000x the efficiency of batteries.

robots building robots installing solar panels.

They forgot to add the “for humans” postfix.

More and more, I'm starting to believe that we are witnessing one of two phenomena. Either we're observing an emergence, in which humanity is making quantum leaps in scientific advancement, or indeed, some form of intelligence is subtly guiding us toward solutions for humanity's most pressing problems.

Why would you believe that an intelligence is pushing humanity that way?

For instance, LK-99 was discovered in 1999. Why would an intelligence who pushed someone to make this tell them to study it for decades and to patent it before they made a publication?

Used to be a brilliant mind could learn all there was known about science. Now its too much, and our minds have a hard time grasping what millions of minds working on a million problems for untold hours can accomplish.

imagine if ai basically ended human labor we all had universal basic income and everyone was essentially advised to become an artist or scientist to essentially work on elevating our knowledge. imagine if every starving kid or adult in 3rd world countries were scientists.

I mean with AI we might not need all those brains on problems but it couldn't hurt to have that large of a scientifically educated body .

Or the alternative: after several years of media coverage almost exclusively being about either the pandemic effects, covid, layoffs, or wars; we've gone "back to normal" by relying on these revolutionary studies/concepts that struggle to ever make it to full availability for clickbait.

yes, some form of intelligence is leading this. it's not aliens or God though, just artificial intelligence grown in a lab.

I don't think those are your only two possibilities. The much more mundane answer is just that this isn't really that different from most years. There's usually a couple of seemingly "big" breakthroughs every year. It's just that the past few years have had most of them overshadowed by negative clickbait news even moreso than normal.

Are you talking about the City of Hope discovery: AOH1996 inhibitor of PCNA?

It's like that every week tbh, you forgot the alzheimer cure (in mice models) and the new revolutionary battery (that we will never hear about again)

> the new revolutionary battery (that we will never hear about again

Which is a cute thing to say if you're totally ignorant of the substantial progress being made, in fundamental research and manufacturing methods, of batteries and energy storage systems every week.

What's this cancer drug you're discussing?

I'm eagerly awaiting cyclodextrin based treatments, that can potentially remove the plaque and cholesterol buildup.

There's so much to be positive about at the moment.

Do you have any links to what you’re referring to? From what I dug up, early results had not shown effectiveness with reversing atherosclerosis.

According to a thing I read a while back on the AHA website the only thing known to reverse atherosclerosis is interment in a concentration camp. :/

Seeking cofounder for a disruptive, high-margin healthcare startup providing new treatments with deep historical roots.

Keep talking like that and you might end up on the cover of Forbes

It appears to be a pretty active area of research on Google Scholar, which is where I first learned about Cyclodextrin for heart disease.

Here are some of the links I've read recently, which sound promising to me (a non-expert in this field).

Microarray patches to deal with bio-availability of Cyclodextrin: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014486172...

Cholrem company has a commercial product Cavadex, which they claim can reverse arterial plaque: https://www.cholrem.com/

Cyclarity Therapeutics have a Cyclodextrin candidate drug they are hoping to start trials on next year: https://cyclaritytx.com/our-science/

Cyclarity (formerly Underdog Pharmaceuticals) published an article on their technology to use Cyclodextrin molecules to encapsulate "toxic biomolecules" including 7-ketocholesterol which they believe is linked to atherosclerosis and macular degeneration. I think this might be the approach they are using with their candidate drug linked above. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037851732...

I get the impression that Cyclodextrins are far from perfect, but at least there is some hope for non-invasive treatments in future.

I'd love to get replacements for my defective and missing lymphatic vessels...

I wonder how long a human brain could survive, if all of its support systems could be maintained indefinitely?

Wayland-Yutani vibes

There was a Quirks and Quarks episode about 35 years ago aabout that and concluded that the brain would only last 300 years due to bacterial erosion.

Pretty sure mine would die of boredom long before.

What would you do without a body?

VR in the metaverse and/or controlling a robotic body in regular meatspace.

Same thing I do with a body: Code, surf the web, and play video games all day

Bacterial erosion? Isn't that what the immune system is for?

New neurons cannot be created in an adult brain (only new synapses), so over the years it's a very slow process of brain atrophy where neurons that die for any reason cannot be replaced. That already makes indefinitely untenable in a messy living system, since many of the inportant bits can't regenerate.

And then neurodegenerative diseases are really hard bugs to fix, those are the fast brain atrophies where you get motor problems, amnesia, impaired cognition, dementia, and so forth.

Avoiding stroke and hypoxia is one thing, but keeping the cell and protein machinery running and self-healing forever without any deadly bugs is a tough ask. It's only optimized to reproduce, not to live forever

That isn't strictly true. New neurons do get created in adult humans, in at least two regions of the brain, but probably more. There is even some evidence of cannabis potentially contributing to this process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_neurogenesis

EDIT: typo

That very Wikipedia article says that adult neurogenesis essentially does not exist in humans, according to the latest studies.

This used to be a very controversial topic, and some people still hold on to the older view, but new research has found nothing in the last place where it could have been plausible.

Adult brain can grow new neurons, at least in hippocampus: https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/new-hippocampal-neurons-continu...

Wayland-Yutani? I can't seem to recall they did that? What film(s)?

My thoughts on the other hand immediately went to the heads in jars in Futurama.

https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Heads_in_Jars

So, lessee - we already got Alien universe, Futurama* ... maybe another I already forgot...

No "Demolition Man"? No "Idiocracy" ... Red Dwarf, Saturday Night Live**, Austin Powers***, ...?

Good lord, I didn't even realize how many of these there are that I'VE seen / can think of.

In any case, THIS is what popped into my mind (who needs "support systems", amiright?):

https://youtu.be/hw6xBdXl1Aw?t=15s

Edit: But look at what has been done with hearts and kidneys...

Hearts and kidneys are tinker toys! I am talking about the central nervous system!

I am a scientist, not a philosopher! You have more chance of reanimating this scalpel than you have of mending a broken nervous system!

...I am not interested in death! The only thing that concerns me is the preservation of life!

[jams the scalpel into his leg...

* Heads in jars, but, of course the basis of the series is Fry coming out of "cryogenic stasis"

** Caveman lawyer ... the usual mix of stupid / corny but with some amusement value, I guess ... can't even quite remember how dumb vs. funny that one was ...

*** "Evacuation complete..." <urination sounds> ... "Evacuation comp..." <urination sounds> "Evac..." <urination sounds> ...

... classic.

How about some engineered blood to go in those engineered vessels?

https://www.kalocyte.com/

That's a nice idea actually. We used culture media in the experiments. I'm interested to know how would the endothelial cells react to the "engineered" blood

Shades of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War “smartblood”

Well, since I'm still quite young, I can look forward to getting all of my internal plumbing replaced for my 65th birthday...

That's the dream

This is great work, very cool that they have a way to potentially scale up a really needed tool to improve therapy.

Also, check out Humacyte https://humacyte.com/

Any chance it cures hypertension? High or low blood pressure?

Great for surgery, what about restoring non invasively ?

Sorry, what do you mean by that? It would be difficult to replace the diseased blood vessel without a surgery

I was stretching the goals to go from engineering to in place restoration

sounds great, but is it a good idea to use polymers inside the body? can't they degrade into sub-cellular sized particles which could then damage cells? And when those cells apoptose their insides come out, including the polymers and those polymers go on to damage another cell.

I've got a sneaking feeling that nanoparticles of plastic are going to be a major health problem in the future. I hope I'm wrong.

Depends whether they are inert. I suspect lack of internal UV light might help a bit. I'd reckon something breaking polymers down internally won't stop until the nanoparticles degrade.

Beta problems

Hi, that's a good point, but given that the graft is made of biocompatible materials, the risk of toxicity is low. The idea is that while the engineered blood vessel degrades slowly, the body will replace it. So, the engineered vessel should be replaced by native blood vessel within a few years of implantation.

It's kind of ludicrous how complex the blood vessels are.

Considering their role, whoever or whatever created the "blueprints" for them must have been very inteligent.

Certainly if credit needs to be given for the design of blood vessels, I'll take all that credit, thank you!

Let us not assume creation and intelligent design with biological evolution does fine. Too many malicious people claim moral superiority/right to rule when you mix in a claim to a creator of life with evolution. Parismony!

Oh, I wasn't thinking about that creator.

The creators I believe in are much closer to actual science than religion.

Or maybe if you get enough rolls of the dice over billions of years you don't need intelligence.

Same thing?

How?

Because someone did the initial rolling of the dice? Someone bought the dice in their version of LA casino.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence of this but who knows what we'll find.

Yup. Pretty sure trained LLMs are functions of the dice rolls provided by the input. What we are now is a function of the dice rolls provided by terrestrial physics.

Who did the rolling of the dice?

But I digress. Arguing with people who believe in world-building RNG Tetris is pointless.

Oh, I imagine we'll keep trying. Each one of us, shaped by both the differing environments we were nurtured in, and our individual genetic nature, will try different ways and means of addressing it with you. Perhaps eventually one argument will succeed, news of its efficacy will spread, and it will come to dominate...

Just to be clear, I wasn't thinking about some biblical God...

I'll take the blame. Dice, rolled.

*intelligent

falsifiable science relies on adjusting to new evidence, so if an invisible being that doesn't interact in our world in any way was able to be quantified in a reproducible experience or experiment, the science would change to accommodate its existence and all fundamental assumptions about reality

Unfalsifiable things are distinctive, in that there is no evidence that would change the assumption. its working backwards to support the unfalsifiable view, as opposed to working forward and adjusting to any result even if it doesnt match the view

> so if an invisible being that doesn't interact in our world in any way was able to be quantified in a reproducible experience

No invisible beigns here. Our creators are either extinct (killed by a world-altering catastrophe, perhaps) or are somewhere far away where they can observe their creation.

So we can't see them?

Can ants "see" us?

But no, not directly. You did give me a good chuckle.

And their creators?

Doesn't matter who created them.

The point is to discover who or what created us.

It does matter though, because whoever created them would be indirectly (or potentially directly) responsible for them creating us.

The reason you're saying it doesn't matter is because it wrecks your denial of reality.

Your denial of reality is the same. Because even evolution had to start from somewhere. We still haven't figured that out. Living organisms didn't just spring into existence out of nowhere.

Evolution can be spontaneously emerge from basic chemistry, no arbitrary convenient cutoffs needed.

If the invisible being doesn't interact with our world in any way,then by definition it cannot be quantified or subjected to experiment?

Also, if the being is super intelligent and running us in a simulation, can you really subject it to experiment?

That would be like processes running in a container going rogue and demanding evidence of their host environment.

and its existence cannot be relied upon to substantiate anything else

the hypothesis wouldn't present itself at all without hearsay, or just be invalidated by all experiments and useless for building upon, compared to just using the substantiated resources at hand: in your analogy that would be all of the other RAM and computational resources to your benefit.

whereas if you play hide and seek with a friend that says theyre going to hide in a magical land you cant access, then you cant play with that friend anymore and thats the totality of the observation, compared to the friend thats ultimately just another process hiding in RAM.

if thats true, whatever created that intelligent being must be VERY intelligent indeed!

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