David Brownell, Christophe Caneparo, Stéphane Chabaud and Stéphane Bolduc
Recent innovations in medicine include tissue engineering to produce tissues or organs for replacement/repair surgeries but also to serve as relevant tridimensional research models. For both applications, presence of microvascular networks inside the reconstructed tissues is necessary to obtain structures that are both complex and more complete. Indeed, rapid inosculation of graft to host is essential for positive clinical outcomes but pre-vascularized tissues are also a need to obtain thick tissue where diffusion of nutrients and oxygen cannot be only passive. In the last two decades, the self-assembly approach was developed at LOEX and has allowed breakthroughs in many organ/tissue reconstructions. This unique technique relies on the production of a stroma scaffold by the mesenchymal cells themselves without the need of exogenous materials. Endothelialisation of such tissues shows a great impact not only on graft reperfusion but also in the improvement of research models such as cancer and psoriatic models. The presence of a vascular or lymphatic network now opens the door to the development of complex and configurable models which may be available soon.
