Vascular tissue engineering and vascularized 3D tissue regeneration.

Vascularized tissue regeneration has a great deal of potential in clinical medicine. Appropriate 3D tissue regeneration that yields tissue with the desired function and shape requires both growth signals and vascularization. In this paper, we discuss vascularized tissue regeneration using various vessel systems: artificial vessel, autologous vascular graft, autologous vascular bundle transfer and tissue engineered vessel. Vascularized 3D tissue regeneration will require a great deal of additional research before it can be applied to clinical situations. Several promising studies of vascularized tissue regeneration have been reported. However, additional studies into the maturation of neovascularization, the development of effective biomaterial, and the possibility of using stem cells will be needed before these techniques can be used in the clinical situation.