Vascular tissue engineering: biodegradable scaffold platforms to promote angiogenesis

Abstract

The ability to understand and regulate human vasculature development and differentiation has the potential to benefit patients suffering from a variety of ailments, including cardiovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, ischemia, and burn wounds. Current clinical treatments for vascular-related diseases commonly use the grafting from patients of autologous vessels, which are limited and often damaged due to disease. Considerable progress is being made through a tissue engineering strategy in the vascular field. Tissue engineering takes a multidisciplinary approach seeking to repair, improve, or replace biological tissue function in a controlled and predictable manner. To address the clinical need to perfuse and repair damaged, ischemic tissue, one approach of vascular engineering aims to understand and promote the growth and differentiation of vascular networks. Vascular tissue engineered constructs enable the close study of vascular network assembly and vessel interactions with the surrounding microenvironment. Scaffold platforms provide a method to control network development through the biophysical regulation of different scaffold properties, such as composition, mechanics, dimensionality, and so forth. Following a short description of vascular physiology and blood vessel biomechanics, the key principles in vascular tissue engineering are discussed. This review focuses on various biodegradable scaffold platforms and demonstrates how they are being used to regulate, promote, and understand angiogenesis and vascular network formation.

Physiology and metabolism of tissue-engineered skeletal muscle

“…62, 63 Microvascular networks can form in a wide range of biodegradable hydrogels, 63 and can be further stabilized by the addition of stromal cells such as embryonic fibroblasts 64 or mesenchymal stem cells 65 Additionally, alternating layers of skeletal muscle and endothelium produced by cell sheet engineering can yield a three-dimensional network of vessels and myofibers. 66 …”

VEGF released by deferoxamine preconditioned mesenchymal stem cells seeded on collagen-GAG substrates enhances neovascularization

“…In chronic wounds, one of the main inhibiting factors is the lack of vasculature due to the inability of the vessels to regrow fast enough to stabilize the wound. Cell signaling can help initiate angiogenesis while a biomaterial can create a platform for revascularization12.…”

Assessment of polyglycolic acid scaffolds for periodontal ligament regeneration

“…A multitude of researches have declared that vascularization is the capstone in tissue engineering application and that cells must be located within 150-200 mm of the nearest capillary to gain access to oxygen and nutrients and, additionally, to remove carbon dioxide and other metabolic products [18,19]. However, obtaining vascularised tissues is an obstacle for cultures engineered in vitro.…”