Engineering a physiologically-relevant blood vessel in vitro

该项目将首次开发一种体外血管模型，通过将血管细胞和丝质管道作为支架来模拟动脉状况。这种方法将克服简单的2D细胞培养的局限性，完全组织工程血管的长成熟时间，以及资源密集型动物模型。拟议的创新生物工程结构建立在CI在材料和表面工程方面的重大进展以及合作组织(Codex Research)的新生物反应器平台的基础上。它将为体外模拟天然血管过程提供一种解决方案，更适合临床前药物和设备开发，并在长期内用于组织替代。

The project will develop an in vitro blood vessel model which will mimic arterial conditions by incorporating vascular cells and silk conduits as scaffolds, for the first time. This approach will overcome the limitations of simplistic 2D cell cultures, the long maturation times of fully tissue-engineered vessels, and resource intensive animal models. The innovative bioengineered construct proposed builds on the CI’s significant advances in materials and surface engineering and the Partner Organisation’s (Codex Research) new bioreactor platform. It will offer a solution for modelling of native vessel processes in vitro that would be more appropriate for pre-clinical drug and device development, and in the long-term, tissue replacement.