More Engineered Blood Vessel Progress
(From Newswise). In an important step forward for tissue engineering, scientists have grown muscle mass complete with an embedded blood vessel system and implanted it in a mouse. "Until now, most scientists have not attempted to provide engineered tissue with its own blood supply. Instead, they have implanted the new tissue into the body and waited for the body itself to infiltrate the tissue with blood vessels. ... The different cells quickly organized themselves on the scaffold, with the myoblast cells transforming into aligned and elongated muscle fiber tubes and the endothelial cells organizing themselves in tubes nestled between the myoblasts." Clever stuff - getting the blood vessels right has been a stumbling point for growing larger tissue masses.