Abstract

A Microphysiolgical Model of Vasculature and MSC-derived Tissue Interaction

Ian Whelan, Lead Author (PhD Student), Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute

Bone and joint disease, though not typically fatal, have substantial effects on quality of life, and pose a considerable economic burden. Tissue engineering approaches have been applied to regenerating damaged bone and cartilage, but without meaningful clinical success; the size of engineered bone is inadequate for clinical human applications, and the quality of engineered cartilage does not match that of native, or can even inadvertently form bone tissue through cartilage hypertrophy. In many of these applications, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are used to engineer bone and cartilage, as evidence suggests these cells can differentiate into the parenchymal cell in each of these tissues. Critically, in order to produce functional tissue in vivo, MSCs must behave synergistically with vasculature at the implant site; as vasculature is required to engineer bone of clinically relevant size, and plays a key role in the conversion of cartilage into bone during endochondral ossification. To this end, we are developing a microphysiological system that models the interaction between vasculature and MSC derived cartilage and bone. This system permits concurrent analysis of vascular network formation and MSC tissue formation separately; facilitating the analysis of interaction between the two cell types, for tissue engineering applications.