Blood vessels are essential to nearly all tissues, delivering nutrients and oxygen, regulating hemostasis, and modulating inflammation. Recreating functional vascular networks is foundational to both basic and translational vascular biology, however current methods to make blood vessels from stem cells are often slow, inefficient, or lack the complexity needed for therapy.
In this study, researchers developed a fast and defined method to build vascular organoids-3D microvascular networks-from human stem cells. By precisely activating two transcription factors (ETV2 and NKX3.1), they were able to drive the formation of both endothelial and mural cells simultaneously. This resulted in self-assembling, functional vessels that can connect to host vasculature when implanted.
This approach not only accelerates the process of building blood vessels but-critically-achieves full, independent control over the two major vascular cell types needed to build functional blood vessels. This level of control has not been previously demonstrated in other models. As a result, this system offers a powerful new platform for vascular network modeling, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.
Source:
Journal reference:
Gong, L., et al. (2025). Rapid generation of functional vascular organoids via simultaneous transcription factor activation of endothelial and mural lineages. Cell Stem Cell. doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2025.05.014.
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