Lab-engineered tissues are a potential alternative for repairing or replacing damaged organs; however their use in the clinic is currently limited. This is because researchers have yet to overcome one major challenge: ensuring the engineered tissues establish a functional blood network that will support their growth and survival in the new host.
TGRI Assistant Scientist Dr. Sara Nunes Vasconcelos and her research team have been developing new approaches to overcome this problem. They’ve developed methods to engineer tissues by embedding small segments of vessels in a gel-like material. After transplantation, the tissues develop a functional blood vessel network with two discernible vessel subtypes: arteries and veins.
In a recent study, published in Biomaterials, the team examined if blood vessel growth in the engineered tissues was affected by a diabetic environment where blood vessel formation is known to be impaired. They discovered that the abnormally high levels of blood sugar found within this environment hindered the formation of distinct arteries and veins at the site of transplantation. This was in part due to the impaired recruitment of cells that are critical to blood vessel development.
Explains Dr. Nunes, “Our study calls for more aggressive diabetes management in patients undergoing bioengineered tissue transplantation. This should include tighter control of blood glucose levels to ensure the survival of grafted tissues.”
This work was supported by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Higher Education King Abdullah Scholarship Program and the Toronto General & Western Hospital Foundation.
Altalhi W, Sun X, Sivak JM, Husain M, Nunes SS. Diabetes impairs arterio-venous specification in engineered vascular tissues in a perivascular cell recruitment-dependent manner. Biomaterials. 2017 Mar. doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2016.12.003.