Researchers mimic vascular system to nourish engineered tissue for transplants

One day soon, laboratories may grow **synthetically engineered tissues** such as muscle or cartilage needed for **transplants**. In a major step forward, Cornell engineers describe in the journal Nature Materials a microvascular system they have developed that can nourish growing tissues. The researchers have engineered **tiny channels** within a water-based gel that mimic a **vascular system** at the cellular scale and can supply oxygen, essential nutrients and growth factors to feed individual **cells**. The so-called gel scaffold can hold tens of millions of living cells per milliliter in a 3-D arrangement, such as in the shape of a knee meniscus, to create a template for tissue to form. Whole article on "cornell":[ http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/Scaffolds.kr.html]

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