Microfabricated fractal trees as scaffolds for capillary morphogenesis: applications in therapeutic angiogenesis and vascular tissue engineering

New engineering and biological techniques are combined to realize constructs for substitution of damaged or diseased tissue. In particular, we combine fractal algorithms and rapid prototyping microfabrication methods to generate polymer scaffolds which simulate branching capillary networks. Human endothelial cells seeded on the scaffolds are then induced to angiogenesis through transfection with adenovirus vectors carrying the gene for human kallikrein. The constructs have potential applications in vascular tissue engineering and therapeutic angiogenesis.