Therapeutic Vascularization for Tissue Regeneration

SARA NUNES DE VASCONCELOS -

Microvascular regeneration and biology -
Her lab is interested in uncovering the rules that govern vessel arterio-venous specification in adult organisms and how this is affected in different diseases such as diabetes and arterio-venous malformations. They also utilize different approaches to develop effective neovascularization strategies for tissue regeneration.

Tissue engineering and organ regeneration -
They also use human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells to engineer cardiac and pancreatic tissues for regenerative medicine applications, the study of tissue biology and development. Here they combine tissue engineering approaches with revascularization techniques to develop complex tissues for in vivo applications.

Organ-on-a-chip -
They are developing personalized “microvasculature-on-a-chip” devices by combining advances in microfluidics and “organ-on-a-chip” technology with primary vascular cell types derived from individual patients. This approach will create microscale models of blood vessel networks that exhibit precise mimicry of the physiological microenvironment while also representing the unique cellular characteristics of a given individual. Their goal is to generate patient-specific vascularized tissues for applications in pre-clinical drug testing and for basic science studies. Following up on their previous work, they continue working on developing cardiac disease models on-a-chip related to congenial and acquired diseases. They use human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells to engineer cardiac tissues for drug screening purposes, regenerative medicine applications and for the study of cardiac biology and development.