Controlling Vascularisation Within Tissue Building Blocks Using Internal and External Mechanical Cues

Modular tissue engineering, also known as “bottom-up” approach, has its ability to better mimic natural tissues and it allows a better control of the microenvironment. Mechanical cues (internal forces, such as cell contractile forces; and external forces, such as shear stress) have significant impacts on formation of vascular network.
This project is to study if the physical forces generated by cells themselves within a hydrogel environment will induce various contractility according to the geometries. Tissue building blocks with different geometries were designed.
Endothelium lining is constantly exposed to hemodynamic shear stresses. By applying fluid flow, we can mimic the natural condition and promote the endothelial alignment and initiate vascular network formation. For this aspect of our work, instead of creating channels, we are building a perfusion device to apply an interstitial flow to study how it affects cell orientation, alignment and endothelial sprouting. We have set the parameters of the device based on computational modelling.