Work

Harnessing developmental processes for vascular engineering and regeneration

Year: 2014

Type: review

Abstract: The formation of vasculature is essential for tissue maintenance and regeneration. During development, the vasculature forms via the dual processes of vasculogenesis and angiogenesis, and is regulated at multiple levels: from transcriptional hierarchies and protein interactions to inputs from the extracellular environment. Understanding how vascular formation is coordinated in vivo can offer valuable insights into engineering approaches for therapeutic vascularization and angiogenesis, whether by creating new vasculature in vitro or by stimulating neovascularization in vivo. In this Review, we will discuss how the process of vascular development can be used to guide approaches to engineering vasculature. Specifically, we will focus on some of the recently reported approaches to stimulate therapeutic angiogenesis by recreating the embryonic vascular microenvironment using biomaterials for vascular engineering and regeneration.

Source: Development

DOI: 10.1242/dev.102194

Authors: Kyung Min Park, Sharon Gerecht

Institution: Johns Hopkins University

Language: English

Topic: Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Subfield: Surgery

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Award: Engineered Stem Cell Microenvironments for controlled Vasculogenesis