title: Trends in tissue engineering for blood vessels.
abstract: Over the years, cardiovascular diseases continue to increase and affect not only human health but also the economic stability worldwide. The advancement in tissue engineering is contributing a lot in dealing with this immediate need of alleviating human health. Blood vessel diseases are considered as major cardiovascular health problems. Although blood vessel transplantation is the most convenient treatment, it has been delimited due to scarcity of donors and the patient's conditions. However, tissue-engineered blood vessels are promising alternatives as mode of treatment for blood vessel defects. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of the advancement on biofabrication technology for treatment of soft tissue defects particularly for vascular tissues. This will also provide an overview and update on the current status of tissue reconstruction especially from autologous stem cells, scaffolds, and scaffold-free cellular transplantable constructs. The discussion of this paper will be focused on the historical view of cardiovascular tissue engineering and stem cell biology. The representative studies featured in this paper are limited within the last decade in order to trace the trend and evolution of techniques for blood vessel tissue engineering.
authors.affiliation: Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, Stem Cell Research Center, Department of Biomedical Science and Technology, SMART Institute of Advanced Biomedical Science, Konkuk University, 143-701 Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Judee Grace
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Nemeno-Guanzon
authors.forename: Soojung
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Johan Robert
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Berg
authors.forename: Yong Hwa
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Jo
authors.forename: Jee Eun
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Yeo
authors.forename: Bo Mi
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Nam
authors.forename: Yong-Gon
authors.initials: YG
authors.lastname: Koh
authors.forename: Jeong Ik
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001807:Blood Vessel Prosthesis / Q000639:trends*; D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D002319:Cardiovascular System; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000266:history / Q000639:trends*; D054457:Tissue Scaffolds