When treating traumatic injuries, it's crucial for surgeons to quickly restore blood flow to grafts, flaps, and engineered scaffolds. However, conventional techniques don't always support this effort. While bulk hydrogel scaffolds—polymer networks capable of retaining large amounts of water without losing their structure—have been used over the years as a means to restore soft tissues during surgical repair, they often face issues with slow and random vascularization upon implantation. Now, researchers working on reconstructive surgery aim to devise a new approach to restore soft tissue loss in patients by integrating two coordinated revascularization methods.

The ability to regenerate and pattern blood vessels, essentially the lifelines extending deep into soft tissues, has remained a challenge in regenerative medicine. Known as tissue revascularization, promoting the growth and pattern formation of blood vessels in damaged or diseased tissues could speed up advancements in the field of regenerative medicine. Researchers at The Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA, USA) plan to combine a category of protein-based granular hydrogel biomaterials with a microsurgical technique called vascular micropuncture. To overcome the limitations of bulk hydrogels, the researchers aim to engineer protein-based granular hydrogel scaffolds by linking microscale hydrogel particles to each other. By manipulating the empty spaces among the hydrogel particles, the researchers will be able to control cellular interaction and assembly, thereby guiding tissue architecture and the development of new blood vessels.

Simultaneously, the team plans to employ vascular micropuncture, where they will pierce blood vessels with microneedles to speed up the creation of new blood vessels. The minute size of the needles ensures there's no blood clotting or significant bleeding. Initially, the researchers will test their methodology using human cells cultured in vitro from patient samples. After establishing a foundational understanding at the cellular level, they will proceed with testing on rodents. The integration of these two techniques will allow for the rapid, architecturally organized formation of new blood vessels. This hierarchical formation—organizing blood vessels from large to medium to small—helps regulate blood flow, distribute oxygen, and control immune cells throughout the reconstructed or injured soft tissue.

“Our microsurgical approach allows for targeted blood vessel formation without the use of any added growth factors or molecules,” said co-principal investigator Dino Ravnic who pioneered the protein-based granular hydrogel biomaterials. “This is exceedingly relevant to advancing tissue engineering and also in treating blood vessel-related conditions.” 

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