HA Microvasculature -- Alex Bick with Eric and Ben ( & Hyeongho)

PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED (PI) / OUTSIDE SKILL REQUIRED (OSR) / RESOLVED (R)

Microfabricated Hyaluronic Acid Vascular Networks

A) Background

B) Hypothesis

C) Specific Aims

D) General Experimental Approach (Design etc)

E) Design Pitfalls and alternatives

F) Potential Figures

G) Future Directions

A) BACKGROUND: Good - keep expanding this with ideas for your paper introduction. Think about this and how you will arrange it while you are doing boring tasks :-) Also start to read literature related to the intro and make notes and keep them here.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in North America and costs the healthcare system ~42 billion dollars annually. The inability of myocardium to regenerate after injury necessitates the need for development of alternative treatment options. Engineered three-dimensional (3D) cardiac tissues can serve as models to study normal and pathological tissue function in vitro, for therapeutic applications, or to test the effect of drugs on tissue structure and function. In addition, the development of a novel microscale vascularized cardiac tissue engineered constructs has tremendous potential applications in the treatment of many different diseases, including heart disease.

B) HYPOTHESIS: Simpler (and clearer) is always easier to test

Microengineering approaches can be used to

1) mimic tissue complexity and the architecture of native cardiac tissues.

2) mimic the native microvasculature to enhance function and longerm viability of tissue engineered structures.

These hypothesis will be tested in the specific aims below

C) SPECIFIC AIMS

AIM 1 - Develop hydrogels with interpenetrating microvasculature (using photocroslinkable hyaluronic acid)

AIM 2 - Generate hydrogels that support cell viability (for how long at what distance etc)

AIM 3 - Generate endothelial lined channels

AIM 4 - Demonstrate generality of method by staking multiple levels of 3d channels

D) GENERAL EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH (this is the start of the materials and methods portion of your paper)

Explain in detail how you PLAN / Did complete each AIM