Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women's Medical University, TWIns, 8-1 Kawada-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8666, Japan.
Nat Commun. 2013;4:1399. doi: 10.1038/ncomms2406.
In vitro fabrication of functional vascularized three-dimensional tissues has been a long-standing objective in the field of tissue engineering. Here we report a technique to engineer cardiac tissues with perfusable blood vessels in vitro. Using resected tissue with a connectable artery and vein as a vascular bed, we overlay triple-layer cardiac cell sheets produced from coculture with endothelial cells, and support the tissue construct with media perfused in a bioreactor. We show that endothelial cells connect to capillaries in the vascular bed and form tubular lumens, creating in vitro perfusable blood vessels in the cardiac cell sheets. Thicker engineered tissues can be produced in vitro by overlaying additional triple-layer cell sheets. The vascularized cardiac tissues beat and can be transplanted with blood vessel anastomoses. This technique may create new opportunities for in vitro tissue engineering and has potential therapeutic applications.
在组织工程领域，体外构建具有功能的血管化三维组织一直是一个长期目标。在这里，我们报告了一种在体外工程化具有可灌注血管的心脏组织的技术。我们使用带有可连接动脉和静脉的切除组织作为血管床，覆盖由内皮细胞共培养产生的三层心脏细胞片，并在生物反应器中灌注培养基来支撑组织构建体。我们表明，内皮细胞与血管床中的毛细血管连接并形成管状腔，从而在心脏细胞片中形成可灌注的体外血管。通过覆盖额外的三层细胞片，可以在体外生成更厚的工程化组织。血管化的心脏组织可以跳动，并可以进行血管吻合移植。这项技术可能为体外组织工程创造新的机会，并具有潜在的治疗应用。
