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Engineering vascularized tissue

Nature Biotechnology volume 23, pages 821–823 (2005)Cite this article

The creation in vitro of vascularized skeletal muscle represents a first step to the engineering of more complex tissue architectures.

If tissue engineering is ever to surpass the tissue thickness limit of 100–200 μm, it must overcome the challenge of creating functional blood vessels to supply cells with oxygen and nutrients and to remove waste products. One possible solution is vascularization of engineered tissue constructs before transplantation. In this issue, Levenberg et al.1 demonstrate the potential of such an approach by engineering three-dimensional vascularized skeletal muscle constructs from myoblasts, fibroblasts and endothelial cells. Furthermore, they show that prevascularization improves the in vivo performance of the tissue constructs in three different models in mice. This timely study provides critical support for an outstanding concept that has implications for engineering tissues of other types.

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Figure 1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiation Oncology, Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02114, Massachusetts, USA

    Rakesh K Jain, Patrick Au, Josh Tam, Dan G Duda & Dai Fukumura

Authors
  1. Rakesh K Jain
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  2. Patrick Au
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  3. Josh Tam
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  4. Dan G Duda
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  5. Dai Fukumura
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Jain, R., Au, P., Tam, J. et al. Engineering vascularized tissue. Nat Biotechnol 23, 821–823 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0705-821

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