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Article: Building a Better Petri Dish New Tissue Engineering Path: Micro-tissues Formed in '3-D'.
- Article from:
- BIOWORLD Today
- Article date:
- February 17, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Don Long
It's fairly easy to grow cells. But you can't just put them together in the lab, Lego-like. Thus far, only nature has been able to manipulate cells into tissues, tissues into organs, in any sort of uniform and sustainable way.
The main barrier for doing this artificially? The inability to create vascular support for artificial tissues and organs to feed and grow them with the necessary blood and other nutrients.
Now, a group of researchers at Brown University believe they have created a foundation for solving this problem, via the "self-assembly' of tissues in three dimensions, growing 3-D "micro-tissues" designed in patterns ...