VESSEL LAB

Research Focus

To accurately model the complex three-dimensional microenvironment of human organs, the VESSEL Lab places particular emphasis on engineering functional vascular systems, including both blood and lymphatic vessels, and incorporating them into 3D organotypic platforms. Through these vascularized human tissue models, we aim to uncover the biomolecular and biomechanical interactions between vascular networks and resident cells under both physiological and pathological conditions.

While these vascularized organotypic platforms are adaptable across multiple organs, our current focus is the liver due to its essential physiological roles and extraordinary regenerative capacity. The liver performs more than 500 critical functions to maintain whole-body homeostasis and is uniquely capable of restoring its mass following substantial injury. Despite these strengths, liver diseases continue to rise globally; for instance, metabolic dysfunction–associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) now affects an estimated 38% of the global population.

Our research aims to model human liver physiology and to investigate how parenchymal cells, non-parenchymal cells, and the surrounding microenvironment act synergistically to maintain liver homeostasis or contribute to the progression of disease such as alcoholic fatty liver disease, MASLD, and cancer. In parallel, we are engineering vascularized liver tissues for potential therapeutic implantation as an alternative to liver transplantation.