Mesodermal Progenitor Cells Enable the Generation of Vascularized Organoids

Researchers have made considerable progress in the construction of small, functional tissue sections called organoids over the past decade, enabled by a combination of better understanding the mechanisms involved in regeneration and embryonic development of tissues, advances in 3-D bioprinting, guidance of cell behavior via appropriate provision of signal molecules, and the generation of environments that mimic an existing tissue environment. Every tissue requires its own specific recipe of signals and environment in order to form a functional organoid, but researchers have demonstrated the manufacture of organoids for liver, kidney, lung, and thymus, among others. Organoids are tiny, usually a millimeter or two in size. They are a stepping stone to the generation of patient matched replacement organs on demand, given a cell sample as a starting point. Ever since the first organoids were generated, however, the blocking challenge to scaling up engineered tissue in size has been the inability to generate organoids that incorporate functional blood vessel networks. In cross-sections of natural tissues, several hundred capillaries pass through every square millimeter. Absent this microvasculature, blood (and thus the necessary oxygen and nutrients for cell survival) cannot perfuse through more than a few millimeters into tissues. Producing vasculature in engineered tissues has proven to be challenging. That it is so challenging is why considerable effort has gone t...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs