Muscle cells self-organize into spirals, advancing efforts to engineer tiny blood vessels that regulate flow
Different tissues need different amounts of blood depending on what they are doing. Meeting those changing demands requires the circulatory system to continually balance how much blood flows to different regions of the body.
Vanderbilt University researchers have made significant progress in engineering microvessels that can regulate blood flow by self-organizing smooth muscle cells into helical patterns. These cells spontaneously aligned in the characteristic helical arrangement found in natural resistance vessels when cultured on gelatin microchannels coated with specific proteins.
This lining allows the cells to contract in response to endothelin-1, demonstrating key features of resistance vessel walls. The researchers believe that this breakthrough could lead to more accurate models for studying diseases related to impaired local blood-flow regulation and potentially be used to develop new therapies targeting the microcirculation.
While the current study focuses on reproducing the structural organization, the next step will be applying this technique to create functional resistance vessels capable of diameter changes induced by contraction.
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