Stretching it

A LOW-TECH way of “growing” arteries could help save heart patients’ lives.
Diseased coronary arteries are often replaced with minor arteries from
elsewhere, but the trick is finding ones long enough, says Valerie Clerin of the
University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Now Clerin has made arteries longer
by putting segments in a nutrient-rich solution and stretching them a bit more
each day, she told a Biomedical Engineering Society meeting in Seattle earlier
this month. “We can double the length of the arteries in nine days.”