The flexibility to regenerate and pattern blood vessels, the literal lifelines extending deep into soft tissues, stays an elusive milestone in regenerative medicine. Referred to as tissue revascularization, stimulating blood vessel growth and pattern formation in damaged or diseased tissues could speed up the sector of regenerative medicine, in keeping with Penn State researchers.
With a four-year, $3 million grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Penn State chemical engineering and reconstructive surgery researchers plan to develop a recent technique to help restore soft tissue loss in patients through two coordinating revascularization techniques.
“Tissue revascularization is a bottleneck for regenerative medicine,” said principal investigator Amir Sheikhi, assistant professor of chemical engineering within the College of Engineering, who also has an affiliation with biomedical engineering. “That is a very important award for the entire field, as we hope to develop a fundamentally recent technique to tackle the issue using a transdisciplinary team.”
When repairing a traumatic injury, surgeons must have the ability to revive blood flow rapidly to grafts, flaps and engineered scaffolds. Nonetheless, this just isn’t at all times feasible using conventional techniques, in keeping with researchers.
The researchers plan to mix a category of protein-based granular hydrogel biomaterials pioneered by Sheikhi, with a microsurgical tactic often called vascular micropuncture, developed by co-principal investigator Dino Ravnic, Huck Chair in Regenerative Medicine and Surgical Sciences, associate professor of surgery on the Penn State College of Medicine, and an attending plastic surgeon on the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
Bulk hydrogel scaffolds -; polymer networks that may hold a considerable amount of water while maintaining their structure -; have been used over the past few many years as a platform to revive soft tissues during surgical repair, in keeping with Sheikhi, but they often suffer slow and random vascularization effects upon implantation.
To handle the restrictions of bulk hydrogels, Sheikhi said he plans to engineer protein-based granular hydrogel scaffolds by attaching microscale hydrogel particles to one another.
“By adjusting the empty spaces among the many hydrogel particles, we will regulate how cells interact with one another and assemble, guiding tissue architecture and the formation of latest blood vessels,” Sheikhi said.
At the identical time, researchers will implement vascular micropuncture, where Ravnic and his team will puncture blood vessels with microneedles to speed up the formation of latest blood vessels. The tiny size of the needles ensures there isn’t any blood clotting or significant bleeding.
“Our microsurgical approach allows for targeted blood vessel formation without using any added growth aspects or molecules,” Ravnic said. “That is exceedingly relevant to advancing tissue engineering and in addition in treating blood vessel-related conditions.”
The researchers will first test their approach using human cells cultured in vitro from patient samples. Once they establish a baseline understanding of the approach on the cellular level, they may test it in rodents.
The mix of the 2 techniques, researchers predict, will allow for brand spanking new blood vessels to rapidly form in an architecturally organized manner. The hierarchical formation -; the organization of blood vessels from big to medium to small -; helps regulate blood flow, diffuse oxygen and modulate immune cells throughout reconstructed or injured soft tissue.
“The patterns of blood vessels should resemble tree branches, with a big trunk fanning out into smaller and smaller branches,” Sheikhi said. “The explanation is that blood must flow from the major vessels deep inside tissues through capillaries.”
Shayn Peirce-Cottler, professor and chair of biomedical engineering on the University of Virginia, will collaborate on the grant.