There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Current limitations of exogenous scaffolds or extracellular matrix based materials
have underlined the need for alternative tissue-engineering solutions. Scaffolds may
elicit adverse host responses and interfere with direct cell-cell interaction, as
well as assembly and alignment of cell-produced ECM. Thus, fabrication techniques
for production of scaffold-free engineered tissue constructs have recently emerged.
Here we report on a fully biological self-assembly approach, which we implement through
a rapid prototyping bioprinting method for scaffold-free small diameter vascular reconstruction.
Various vascular cell types, including smooth muscle cells and fibroblasts, were aggregated
into discrete units, either multicellular spheroids or cylinders of controllable diameter
(300-500 microm). These were printed layer-by-layer concomitantly with agarose rods,
used here as a molding template. The post-printing fusion of the discrete units resulted
in single- and double-layered small diameter vascular tubes (OD ranging from 0.9 to
2.5mm). A unique aspect of the method is the ability to engineer vessels of distinct
shapes and hierarchical trees that combine tubes of distinct diameters. The technique
is quick and easily scalable.