In vitro fabrication of functional three-dimensional tissues with perfusable blood vessels

Artificially engineered tissues may have many therapeutic applications but complex tissues are hard to create in vitro . Here, Okano and colleagues report the production of functional cardiac tissue sheets with perfusable blood vessels, which increase the thickness and survival of transplanted tissu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2013-01, Vol.4 (1), p.1399-1399, Article 1399
Main Authors: Sekine, Hidekazu, Shimizu, Tatsuya, Sakaguchi, Katsuhisa, Dobashi, Izumi, Wada, Masanori, Yamato, Masayuki, Kobayashi, Eiji, Umezu, Mitsuo, Okano, Teruo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/61/2035
692/308
Animals
Bioreactors
Blood vessels
Blood Vessels - growth & development
Blood Vessels - transplantation
Cartilage
Cell Survival
Coculture Techniques
Endothelial Cells - cytology
Humanities and Social Sciences
Male
Microscopy, Fluorescence
multidisciplinary
Neovascularization, Physiologic
Perfusion
Rats
Rats, Inbred F344
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Tissue engineering
Tissue Engineering - methods
Tissue Survival
Veins & arteries
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Summary:Artificially engineered tissues may have many therapeutic applications but complex tissues are hard to create in vitro . Here, Okano and colleagues report the production of functional cardiac tissue sheets with perfusable blood vessels, which increase the thickness and survival of transplanted tissue. In vitro fabrication of functional vascularized three-dimensional tissues has been a long-standing objective in the field of tissue engineering. Here we report a technique to engineer cardiac tissues with perfusable blood vessels in vitro . Using resected tissue with a connectable artery and vein as a vascular bed, we overlay triple-layer cardiac cell sheets produced from coculture with endothelial cells, and support the tissue construct with media perfused in a bioreactor. We show that endothelial cells connect to capillaries in the vascular bed and form tubular lumens, creating in vitro perfusable blood vessels in the cardiac cell sheets. Thicker engineered tissues can be produced in vitro by overlaying additional triple-layer cell sheets. The vascularized cardiac tissues beat and can be transplanted with blood vessel anastomoses. This technique may create new opportunities for in vitro tissue engineering and has potential therapeutic applications.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms2406