In vitro pre-vascularisation of tissue-engineered constructs A co-culture perspective

Abstract

In vitro pre-vascularization is one of the main vascularization strategies in the tissue engineering field. Culturing cells within a tissue-engineered construct (TEC) prior to implantation provides researchers with a greater degree of control over the fate of the cells. However, balancing the diverse range of different cell culture parameters in vitro is seldom easy and in most cases, especially in highly vascularized tissues, more than one cell type will reside within the cell culture system. Culturing multiple cell types in the same construct presents its own unique challenges and pitfalls. The following review examines endothelial-driven vascularization and evaluates the direct and indirect role other cell types have in vessel and capillary formation. The article then analyses the different parameters researchers can modulate in a co-culture system in order to design optimal tissue-engineered constructs to match desired clinical applications.

Endothelial Network Formation Within Human Tissue-Engineered Skeletal Muscle

“…25,26 Adding multiple cell types in an organoid presents a challenge regarding culture conditions. 27 In addition, in our system, culture conditions needed to be modified to sustain growth and differentiation of both cell types. We observed that endothelial cells fail to survive and form networks in the optimal culture condition for fibrin BAMs in skeletal muscle growth and differentiation medium.…”

Cell-microenvironment interactions and architectures in microvascular systems

“…The focus of this section is discussing the materials and microfabrication approaches to generate microvascular systems. Other review papers are recommended for detailed analyses of cell sources and biochemical modification of scaffolds (Bae, Puranik, 2012, Baldwin, Antille, 2014). …”

“…Several literature reviews have largely focused on identifying critical aspects for successful development of vascularized models. Many of them were found to be mainly focused on the fundamental principles of engineering, microfabrication techniques (Auger et al, 2013) and microfluidic technologies (Inamdar and Borenstein, 2011, Wong et al, 2012), while other reviews highlighted the pivotal role of cell sources (Baldwin et al, 2014), scaffolds and pro-angiogenic factors (Bae et al, 2012, Kaully et al, 2009, Palumbo et al, 2014, Park and Gerecht, 2014) with low emphasis on microfabrication strategies. This review attempts to critically summarize and connect engineering principles and biological considerations as well as highlight how design of the system architecture and selection of the most suitable microfabrication technique are the first steps for analyzing biological phenomena occurring in a specific environment.…”

Biologically Inspired Smart Release System Based on 3D Bioprinted Perfused Scaffold for Vascularized Tissue Regeneration

“…Some studies have indicated a positive effect of implanting biomaterial constructs co‐cultured with mesenchymal and vascular cells, where the development of vascularized tissues both in vitro and in vivo was enabled 25. Therefore, co‐culturing hMSCs with HUVECs in our study was conducted to generate the vascularized bone tissue.…”