Development of a tissue-engineered bypass graft seeded with stem cells.

The gold standard conduit for bypass of diseased small-diameter arteries remains autologous vascular tissue. In the absence of such tissue, patients are offered bypass with prosthetic material, with far less durable results. Vascular tissue engineering, the creation of a vascular conduit by seeding a tubular scaffold with various cells, may offer an alternative approach to this difficult situation.