The National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) yesterday said its researchers had engineered a novel vascular construct of a stem cell-laden 3D-printed scaffold that can enhance tissue revascularization.
As restoring or replacing a malfunctioning human organ is very difficult and waiting for a suitable organ for a transplant can take a long time, transplantable engineered tissue is highly sought after, but its development has been hampered by the lack of a vascular network within the engineered tissue.
The research team manufactured a novel 3D architecture scaffold with poly(glycerol sebacate) acrylate (PGSA), serving as a functional and transplantable vascular construct, which provides an innovative alternative therapeutic strategy for vascular tissue engineering, and could possibly be used to treat ischemic disease and for organ transplants.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
The research team is led by NHRI Institute of Cellular and System Medicine director Yet Shaw-fang (林秀芳) and Jane Wang (王潔), an associate professor at National Tsing Hua University’s Department of Chemistry.
To repair or regenerate ischemic tissues, revascularization is essential to support the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the cells and to clear waste products, Jiang Wei-cheng (蔣偉程), a postdoctoral fellow at the NHRI Institute of Cellular and System Medicine, said yesterday.
One of the more recent strategies is “prevascularization,” or forming microvascular networks within the tissue construct before implantation, Jiang said.
However, a major challenge during development is insufficient cell supply in the initial stage prior to implantation, he said, adding that another challenge is selecting the biomaterial and the architecture scaffold for the development of an efficient and effective vascular construct.
Jiang said the team took a regenerative engineering approach by taking stem cells and utilizing a digital light processing system to manufacture a recently designed novel 3D-printed architecture scaffold with PGSA, to be used for the generation of novel vascular constructs.
Transplantation of the vascular construct in wounded mice resulted in the formation of a new vascular network that integrated into the existing vasculature of the host tissue, leading to revascularization and enhanced blood perfusion at the implant site, Lin said.
The technology for engineering the vascular construct could be further developed to help treat diseases, such as peripheral arterial disease in people with diabetes or another ischemic disease, she said, adding that it could also be used for organ transplants, drug testing, or in vitro tissue or organ engineering.
The team’s study was published by the journal Biofabrication in July last year, the NHRI said.
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