💬 Quoted: “It’s like spare parts for people.”

New research from Harvard and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering outlines how a team of scientists created a new method to 3D-print blood vessels, bringing artificial organs one step closer to reality (in a twist of irony, this story made a British member of our team exclaim “bloody hell!”).

• The new method, published in the journal Advanced Materials, creates a structure that mimics part of the human heart and allows fluid to flow.

Other scientists and companies are also playing in this space. One of the entities furthest along is Humacyte, a North Carolina-based biotech company bringing the auto-body shop approach to actual bodies – meaning it makes lab-grown blood vessels already being used in live humans.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal:

• Humacyte has already implanted more than 500 of its blood vessels in humans.
• The company’s approach has helped treat 69 people with injuries from gunshots, workplace accidents, car crashes, and other traumas. It’s also been used on 19 soldiers in Ukraine via a special humanitarian program that was approved by the FDA, where many of the soldiers were wounded by explosives.

🩸 Bottom line: Lab-grown blood vessels would offer surgeons a drastically different method to help patients whose arteries have been torn in explosions or car crashes, for example. Doctors typically use a patient’s own blood vessels cut from a different part of the body or synthetic grafts made of plastic, which can cause clotting and other problems.

💰🏢 Stat of the Day: Looking for a raise? Time to dust off your coffee-fetching skills and apply for an internship at Jane Street Capital. The semi-secretive trading firm, which counts FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and former FTX CFO Caroline Ellison as alumni, is listing intern positions with base pay starting at $250,000/year, per the Financial Times – or more than the annual salaries of Fed Chair Jerome Powell and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

🤔 Did You Know? Outback Steakhouse was founded in Tampa, Florida, in the late ‘80s by Americans who had never visited Australia, but wanted to ride the cultural wave inspired by Crocodile Dundee – the second-most popular US film of 1986.

📰 Worth a Read: These beaches are among LA's favorites. But they're fake → (BBC Future)