Emergence of Tissue-Engineered Human Blood Vessels by Self-Assembly as Vascular Models

One of the most exacting challenges of tissue engineering is the production of small-diameter blood vessels as human vascular grafts, notably for coronary artery bypass surgeries. Several captivating reviews have been written specifically to address the problems (Isenberg et al., 2006; Nerem and ensley, 2004; Mitchell and Niklason, 2003; l’Heureux et al., 2006; Desai et al., 2011). Many methodologies have been developed to answer the clinical needs of the perfect graft. the generation of a vessel that is biologically and functionally comparable to native vessels obviously is quite a challenge (Gong and Niklason, 2006). In parallel, there is a need to replace animals when studying the vascular system. As has been shown many times, results obtained from animals do not always transfer to humans. However, it is difficult to obtain available human tissue that can be dissected out in good condition (Stoclet et al., 1996). Furthermore, uncontrollable factors relating to the donor may interfere with the experiments. therefore, we believe that both the development of the optimal vascular graft and the development of novel valuable models for the study of the vascular system can benefit from the innovations in tissueengineered blood vessels (teBV). the scope of this article is to present a human self-assembly teBV made by cell-sheet technology as developed at the Laboratoire d’Organogénèse EXpérimentale (lOex). this kind of model could be used to reduce, or in some cases replace, animal use in fundamental research.