It remains challenging to produce large or thick sections of engineered tissue because there is no widely adopted, feasible approach to creating sufficient dense and structured blood vessel networks. A capillary network is needed to supply the inner sections of larger blocks of tissue, and without this networking cells die due to lack of nutrients and oxygen. While some very promising lines of work exist, such as that under development at Volumetric, they are not yet broadly employed in the research community. This state of affairs limits the applications of tissue engineering to cases in which thin sheets of tissue can be useful, such as the production of a patch for a dam…
Improving the Structure of Tissue Engineered Heart Patches
It remains challenging to produce large or thick sections of engineered tissue because there is no widely adopted, feasible approach to creating sufficient dense and structured blood vessel networks. A capillary network is needed to supply the inner sections of larger blocks of tissue, and without this networking cells die due to lack of nutrients and oxygen. While some very promising lines of work exist, such as that under development at Volumetric, they are not yet broadly employed in the research community. This state of affairs limits the applications of tissue engineering to cases in which thin sheets of tissue can be useful, such as the production of a patch for a dam…