ABSTRACT
Great strides have been made within the eld of tissue engineering over the last decade. Researchers and clinicians are beginning to develop functional tissues in vitro that are intended to replace or repair damaged organs. However, regardless of the physiological system being developed, a critical and challenging aspect of tissue regeneration is the successful vascularization of the implanted tissue (Novosel et al. 2011, Auger et al. 2013). Without a working vascular network, tissue constructs of appreciable size, that is those exceeding 200 μm in thickness, would lack sufcient oxygen and nutrients for sustained growth. In addition, the absence of a vascular network would lead to accumulation of metabolic waste. Overcoming this challenge requires unraveling the complex system of subcellular-, cellular-, and tissue-scale interactions that take place between newly forming blood vessels and their physiological environment.
