A recent study from Youngmee Jung, HaYeun Ji, et al (http://www.nature.com/articles/srep15116) has demonstrated that the RCCS is critical in maintenance and maturation of Tissue Engineered Blood Vessels. (TEBV) The group recently published in Nature: Scientific Reports showing successful generation of TEBV which were cultured in a multistep process without scaffold material.  Using a co-culture of MSCs as the vessel wall and hEPCs (human endothelial progenitor cells) as the lumen, the research team generated a TEBV which had an outer diameter of  ~1.13 mm and a burst pressure of 342.3 ± 101.2 mmHg, higher than that of human physiological vascular microenvironments. Vasoconstriction in response to phenylephrine and NO (Nitric Oxide) release was comparable to native porcine femoral vein under identical treatment.

In the future, the authors project that these TEBV will be useful for in vitro drug response studies, especially as they relate the condition of atherosclerosis.

The team states that culture without scaffold material would create a better model for in-vitro drug screening as well as offering a higher cell density, mimicking the density of the smooth muscle cell layer in vivo.

Visit the researchers' laboratory website here: http://orion.bme.columbia.edu/leonglab/

The vessels used in this study can be found here

Synthecon also manufactures custom systems. We have created custom perfusion blood vessel systems for our customers which have allowed maturation and media perfusion through the blood vessel lumen in the same system. S