Replicating in vitro the complex in vivo tissue microenvironment has the potential to transform our approach to medicine and also our understanding of biology. In order to accurately model the 3D arrangement and interaction of cells and extracellular matrix, new microphysiological systems must include a vascular supply. The vasculature not only provides the necessary convective transport of oxygen, nutrients, and waste in 3D culture, but also couples and integrates the responses of organ systems. Here we combine tissue engineering and microfluidic technology to create an in vitro 3D metabolically active stroma (∼1 mm³) that, for the first time, contains a perfused, living, dynamic, interconnected human capillary network. The range of flow rate (μm/s) and shear rate (s⁻¹) within the network was 0–4000 and 0–1000, respectively, and thus included the normal physiological range. Infusion of FITC dextran demonstrated microvessels (15–50 μm) to be largely impermeable to 70 kDa. Our high-throughput biology-directed platform has the potential to impact a broad range of fields that intersect with the microcirculation, including tumor metastasis, drug discovery, vascular disease, and environmental chemical toxicity.

This paper reports a polydimethylsiloxane microfluidic model system that can develop an array of nearly identical human microtissues with interconnected vascular networks. The microfluidic system design is based on an analogy with an electric circuit, applying resistive circuit concepts to design pressure dividers in serially-connected microtissue chambers. A long microchannel (550, 620 and 775 mm) creates a resistive circuit with a large hydraulic resistance. Two media reservoirs with a large cross-sectional area and of different heights are connected to the entrance and exit of the long microchannel to serve as a pressure source, and create a near constant pressure drop along the long microchannel. Microtissue chambers (0.12 μl) serve as a two-terminal resistive component with an input impedance >50-fold larger than the long microchannel. Connecting each microtissue chamber to two different positions along the long microchannel creates a series of pressure dividers. Each microtissue chamber enables a controlled pressure drop of a segment of the microchannel without altering the hydrodynamic behaviour of the microchannel. The result is a controlled and predictable microphysiological environment within the microchamber. Interstitial flow, a mechanical cue for stimulating vasculogenesis, was verified by finite element simulation and experiments. The simplicity of this design enabled the development of multiple microtissue arrays (5, 12, and 30 microtissues) by co-culturing endothelial cells, stromal cells, and fibrin within the microchambers over two and three week periods. This methodology enables the culturing of a large array of microtissues with interconnected vascular networks for biological studies and applications such as drug development.

We report the first demonstration of a microfluidic platform that captures the full physiological range of mass transport in 3-D tissue culture. The basis of our method used long microfluidic channels connected to both sides of a central microtissue chamber at different downstream positions to control the mass transport distribution within the chamber. Precise control of the Péclet number (Pe), defined as the ratio of convective to diffusive transport, over nearly five orders of magnitude (0.0056 to 160) was achieved. The platform was used to systematically investigate the role of physiological mass transport on vasculogenesis. We demonstrate, for the first time, that vasculogenesis can be independently stimulated by interstitial flow (Pe > 10) or hypoxic conditions (Pe < 0.1), and not by the intermediate state (normal living tissue). This simple platform can be applied to physiological and biological studies of 3D living tissue followed by pathological disease studies, such as cancer research and drug screening.

In this paper, we report a new type of electrospinning collector that allows simultaneous collection and alignment of multiple poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) piezoelectric fiber bundles with a controlled separation. The key enabling feature is the serrated teeth along the edges across an inclined gap as a part of the conductive collector. As a result, the electrical field across the gap is shaped to direct the electrospun fibers to merge into multiple bundles. The sharp points on the serrated teeth provide favorable charge dissipation points and thus fibers are preferentially formed bridging two closest sharp points across the gap. To investigate the effectiveness of serrated teeth on the formation of multiple fiber bundles, three-dimensional finite element simulations are conducted. The corresponding collectors are implemented to experimentally study the resulting electrospun fibers. Both simulation and experimental results suggest that multiple fiber bundles can be formed under the condition of a low teeth pitch to gap distance ratio. Furthermore, a sharper tooth angle results in a higher preferential formation of fiber bundles. Finally, the total electrospinning time should be less than 60 seconds to maintain favorable electric field profile. We also demonstrate that these piezoelectric fiber bundles can serve as ultra-flexible textile sensors.