Tissue engineering

1. A method of producing a vascular graft comprising:

i) introducing into constituent cells obtained from a human, said constituent cells comprising smooth muscle cells, a construct that comprises a nucleic acid sequence encoding a lifespan extending or immortalizing protein product having telomerase catalytic activity, under conditions such that said nucleic acid sequence is expressed and said protein product is thereby produced, and

ii) engineering said cells resulting from step (i) into said vascular graft.

2. The method according to claim 1 wherein said constituent cells further comprise cells selected from the group consisting of endothelial cells, epithelial cells, fibroblasts, pericytes, cardiomyocytes and nervous system cells.

3. The method according to claim 1 wherein said constituent cells further comprise non-neonatal endothelial cells.

4. The method according to claim 1 wherein said nucleic acid sequence encodes a catalytic protein subunit of telomerase reverse transcriptase.

5. The method according to claim 4 wherein said telomerase reverse transcriptase is human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT).

6. The method according to claim 1 wherein said protein product does not induce a tumorigenic phenotype.

7. The method according to claim 1 wherein said nucleic acid sequence is present in said construct in operable linkage with a promoter functional in said constituent cells.

8. The method according to claim 7 wherein said promoter is a viral promoter or a tetracycline-inducible promoter.

9. The method according to claim 1 wherein said construct is excisable.

10. The method according to claim 9 wherein said construct is excisable by site-specific recombination.

11. The method according to claim 10 wherein said construct is excisable by Cre recombinase.

12. The method according to claim 1 wherein said construct is introduced into said constituent cells transiently.

13. The method according to claim 12 wherein said transient introduction is effected using an adenoviral vector.

14. The method according to claim 1 wherein said step (ii) comprises seeding cells resulting from step (i) on a tubular support and culturing said cells so that said vascular graft is formed.

15. The method according to claim 14 wherein said tubular support is a gel of denatured collagen, a degradable or non-degradable synthetic scaffold, a fibrillar collagen scaffold or an extracellular matrix scaffold.

16. The method according to claim 1 wherein said step (ii) comprises culturing cells resulting from step (i) so that a cellular sheet is produced and rolling said sheet to form said vascular graft.

17. An isolated vascular graft comprising smooth muscle cells obtained from a human and comprising a recombinant molecule comprising a nucleic acid sequence encoding a lifespan extending or immortalizing protein product having telomerase catalytic activity.

18. The graft according to claim 17 wherein said protein product is hTERT.

19. The method according to claim 1 wherein said vascular graft is an arterial graft.

20. The vascular graft according to claim 17 wherein said vascular graft is an arterial graft.