Injectable therapeutic vascularized micro-tissues engineered using sacrificial hydrogels

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dr Ninna Rossen (BRIC-University of Copenhagen)
• Friday 08 May 2020, 15:00-16:30
• Online.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Hilde Hambro.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81492263459

Complex 3D micro-tissues and organoids are becoming widespread in drug-screening technologies, but have been used sparingly for cell therapy as current approaches for producing self-organized cell clusters lack scalability or reproducibility in size and cellular organization. To address this challenge, we have engineered complex 3D micro-tissues consisting of a blood vessel core and a mesenchymal stem cell shell that can act as building blocks in a new vascular network for regenerative medicine. The micro-tissues are small enough to be injected, and the core-shell structure protects them from the shear stress of injection. The microtissues’ injectability enables direct delivery of vascular building blocks to diseased areas, thereby obviating surgery in ischemic tissues with impaired wound healing. We introduced a method of using hydrogels as sacrificial scaffolds and a growth factor regime, which allows cells to form self-organized clusters followed by gentle release, resulting in highly-reproducible multicellular structures on a large scale. We demonstrated this strategy for endothelial cells and mesenchymal stem cells to self-organize into blood-vessel units, which were injected into mice, and rapidly formed perfusing vasculature. Moreover, in a mouse model of peripheral artery disease, intramuscular injections of blood-vessel units resulted in rapid restoration of vascular perfusion within seven days. As cell therapy transforms into a new class of therapeutic modality, this simple method – making use of the dynamic nature of hydrogels – could offer high yields of self-organized multicellular aggregates with reproducible sizes and cellular architectures.

This talk is part of the Engineering - Mechanics and Materials Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge University Engineering Department Talks
• Cambridge talks
• Centre for Smart Infrastructure & Construction
• Computational Continuum Mechanics Group Seminars
• Engineering - Mechanics and Materials Seminar Series
• Engineering - Mechanics, Materials and Design (Div C) - talks and events
• Featured lists
• Interested Talks
• Lennard-Jones Centre external
• Online
• School of Technology
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• bld31

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.