Abstract

Scale-Encompassing Vascular Models via Laser-Induced Hydrogel Degradation

John H. Slater, Associate Professor, Dept of Biomedical Engineering, University of Delaware

In the United States, one of every three deaths is attributed to cardiovascular disease (CD). To address these alarming statistics, in vitro vessels-on-a-chip could be a useful tool for modeling CD and developing and testing potential drug candidates. While many engineering approaches can generate large diameter vessels, the ability to generate vessels in the arteriole to capillary size range is non-trivial. Additionally, many existing approaches to engineer microvasculature are limited in their ability to generate repeatable networks with respect to vascular scale and architecture, or to generate 3D biomimetic networks. To address these limitations, we developed a laser-induced hydrogel degradation (LIHD) technique to fabricate biomimetic, perfusable, endothelialized µfluidic networks in both synthetic and natural hydrogels. LIHD allows generation of vascular features over a 100-fold range from 3 to 300 µm in diameter, encompassing arteriole to capillary sized vessels, and enables tailoring of the cellular microenvironment to fit the desired disease modeling application of in vitro vascularized constructs.