Highly Organized Vascular Network Geometry for iPSC-derived Cardiac Muscle Tissue

The robust repair of large wounds and tissue defects critically relies on blood perfusion provided by a healthy vessel network. Vascularization is one of the major challenges in tissue engineering and without the presence of blood flow, oxygen and nutrients cannot reach the cells located far from host blood vessels. In particular, fabricating vascularized cardiac muscle tissue is of high interest due to the increasing need of functional implantable cardiac tissue for the repair of a variety of heart diseases, including myocardial infarction. Native cardiac tissue is comprised of aligned cardiomyocytes nurtured by an organized vascular network, formed by endothelial and support cells. Here, we describe a method to create a highly organized endothelial cells array using mesh scaffolds, with the potential to form organized vessel networks that nourish an engineered cardiac patch, created from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSc) derived cardiomyocytes (CM).