Surveillance of engineered tissues development using transparent incubator and integrated imaging module

Description

Vascular networks are multiscale structures that control blood circulation, nutrients, gas transfer within tissues and are necessary for the clinical success of engineered tissue constructs. These networks often display plasticity with respect to local cues such as hemodynamics, stiffness of surrounding microenvironment and are constantly respond to the chemical stimuli. Hence, a comprehensive understanding about their formation and evolution within both the in vitro and in vivo systems is pivotal for various tissue engineering and drug testing applications. However, reported investigations of vascular tissue engineering show limitations in terms of available physiological pre-clinical models, optical inaccessibility and aseptic nature of these models. To overcome these limitations, we designed a simple mini transparent incubator with integrated imaging module that helps to visualize the spatiotemporal dynamics of vascular networks development at cellular scale and their interaction with surrounding microenvironment. Our system also allow us to perform multiple biomechanical and biochemical perturbations within in vitro and in vivo setting and monitor them over long period, under controlled conditions. In proof-of-principle experiments, we demonstrate that this system is compatible with both label-free and fluorescent samples. This methodology stands apart from the typical techniques requiring expensive optics, complicated equipments and larger lab space.

Period	7 Jul 2021
Event title	Annual Conference of the Society of Experimental Biology, SEB 2021
Event type	Conference
Location	Virtual ConferenceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International