Tissue Engineering of Dermal Blood and Lymphatic Microvascular Networks

This proposal focused on establishing the conditions necessary to induce lymphatic endothelial cell EC tube morphogenesis in 3D collagen matrices with the long-term goal of establishing separate networks of lymphatic tubes and co-existing, but not interconnecting networks of blood EC-lined tubes. In addition, we hoped that pericytes, which support blood EC tube networks, but not lymphatic vessel networks, would selectively recruit to one versus the other type of tube. Overall, we made progress, but did not identify the conditions that supported lymphatic tube morphogenesis over the long-term. We did identify some conditions that permitted early survival and some tube formation, but generally this did not persist over the long-term and there were not extensive tube networks observed.