From the Ground Up

Generating tissue growth has always been a difficult and arduous process. Producing functional tissue (those containing blood vessels) samples is extremely slow. However, recently University of Rice and Baylor School of Medicine have discovered a new way to generate tissue with functional capillaries. The much improved method was a step in the right direction and much more efficient than the current known process involving charging plastic blocks that provided the foundations for blood vessel growth. The need of a blood supply is required for the development of new tissues. However creating a suitable network for which that blood vessel can foster has proven to be difficult. The old method of using plastic as a basis was too cumbersome and time-consuming. This pushed for the need of a better technique and it was answered recently in the labs of Rice and Baylor. The new method involves the use of polyethylene glycol or PEG. PEG is a common substance found toothpaste, anti-freeze and printer ink. The PEG was modified to resemble a cellular matrix for which blood vessels can grow mimicking the protein coated scaffolds found in tissue. Using this, researchers used umbilical cells aided with human growth factors to further the growth of a network of vessels. Next, the network was exposed to UV light aiding researchers to track the growth in a 72 hour time span. The development of new blood vessels can be clearly indentified. Researchers are hoping to model this growth in a 3-D model to better display the results.

The development of all complex organisms begins with the basics and this article showed an improved method to laying down those basic foundations that are the tissues and the blood vessel network. Because of that, I believe this to be an incredible breakthrough in bioengineering. With an efficient method of developing tissues, everything down the line can be that much easier to develop. Of course refining this technique may take a while but to know that it is possible show how fast modern medicine is progressing.

Article

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-01/tissue-engineering-breakthrough-lab-grown-tissue-can-grow-its-own-blood-vessels

UV imaging

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtMifCkTHTo&feature=player_embedded

Angdi Liu