Abstract
Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have come a long way in recent decades, but the lack of functioning vasculature is still a major obstacle preventing the development of thicker, physiologically relevant tissue constructs. A large part of this obstacle lies in the development of the vessels on a microscale—the microvasculature—that are crucial for oxygen and nutrient delivery. In this review, we present the state of the art in the field of microvascular tissue engineering and demonstrate the challenges for future research in various sections of the field. Finally, we illustrate the potential strategies for addressing some of those challenges.
Highlights
Blood vessels are often considered a uniform part of the circulatory system, maintaining a homeostatic environment in the tissues by supplying oxygen and nutrients and removing metabolic byproducts [1,2]
While tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have come a long way in recent decades [4,5,6], successful upscaling of tissue-engineered remains limited due to diffusion, which is insufficient for long-distance (>100–200 μm) delivery of oxygen and nutrients, as well as auxiliary functions such as waste removal and cellular communication [1,7,8]
The aim of this review is to examine current approaches to microvascular tissue engineering to present the current state of the art of used materials, techniques, and cell sources, as well as their behavior while interacting with each other in native and simulated tissues
Summary
Blood vessels are often considered a uniform part of the circulatory system, maintaining a homeostatic environment in the tissues by supplying oxygen and nutrients and removing metabolic byproducts [1,2]. While the function of large vessels is conducting fluid through the body, microvasculature enables the exchange of substances between the vascular lumen and the surrounding tissue [3]. Albeit there is no universal definition of microvasculature, it can best be described as a system of small diameter vessels (usually less than 100 μm) that exhibit a high surface-area-to-volume ratio and enable rapid exchange of fluid, solutes, and cells across the endothelial layer [3]. Microvascularization is one of the unsolved challenges of vascular tissue engineering (VTE). It is very important for the future development of various branches of tissue engineering, this topic is currently only vaguely addressed in the available literature. Biomedicines 2021, 9, 589 future prospects of this important field, which intertwines to various degrees with all tissue engineering applications
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