Scientists develop a new method for 3D printing vascular networks for organ transplantation

Growing functional human organs outside the body is the long-awaited "holy grail" of organ transplant medicine that remains elusive. A new study from Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biological Engineering and the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Paulson (SEAS), brings this quest another big step closer to completion.
A paper on this achievement has been published in the journal Advanced Materials.

The team of scientists has created a new method for 3D printing vascular networks, which consist of interconnected blood vessels that have a distinct "shell" of smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells surrounding a hollow "core" through which fluid can flow, embedded in human heart tissue. This vascular architecture exactly replicates the structure of natural blood vessels and represents a significant advance towards the creation of implantable human organs.

To confirm the effectiveness of the new method, the team of scientists first printed their multilayered vessels on a transparent granular hydrogel matrix. They then printed the vessels on a new matrix consisting of a porous collagen-based material that replicates the dense fibrous structure of living muscle tissue. They were able to successfully print branched vascular networks on both of these cell-free matrices.

Finally, the researchers were able to test their method inside living human tissue. They created hundreds of thousands of heart organ building blocks (OBBs) - tiny spheres of human heart cells that are compressed into a dense cellular matrix. Then, using the new method, they printed a biomimetic network of blood vessels within the heart tissue.

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