Tissue engineers are finding ways to grow living organs and tissues from cells, with the aim of replacing diseased and damaged counterparts in the body. Scientists have successfully grown artificial muscles, livers, kidneys, skin, and other tissues. But there's been no reliable way to engineer precisely patterned networks of blood vessels, some of which can be finer than a human hair. The team has built a human 'blood vessel on a chip,' composed of a central artery made from human endothelial cells, that is embedded in a gel that also contains a small magnet. The researchers studied how the main artery responded as they jostled the gel back and forth using an external magnet to move the magnet embedded within the gel. They found that the simple mechanical action of repeatedly jostling the artery stimulated the artery to sprout other, smaller capillaries. By changing the direction in which the artery is jostled or stretched, the researchers could redirect the growing new vessels. And...
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