Replacement Alternatives

Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering is providing replacement alternatives that are being used in research today. For example, at the Université Laval in the Laboratoire d'organogénèse expérimentale (LOEX), scientists have created engineered tissue substitutes for:

• Vascular tissue
• Bronchial tissue
• Human cornea
• Human skin

These are being used in a variety of research areas in place of animals. For example:

• Tissue-engineered vascular substitutes are used to study the role of the adventitia layer of blood vessels in vascular physiology and related mechanisms. Using vascular substitutes allows researchers to avoid challenges related to obtaining healthy human vascular samples, and isolating intact adventitia.

  Source: Auger F.A., D'Orléans P.  & Germain L. (2007) Adventitia contribution to vascular contraction: hints provided by tissue-engineered substitutes. Cardiovascular Research 75: 669-78

• Bioengineered bronchial equivalents (BE) are prepared in vitro from bronchial epithelial (HBEC) and fibroblastic cells (HBFC) from biopsies of asthmatic and non-asthmatic human volunteers. The BE provide in vitro models to study the mechanisms involved in asthma.

  Source: Paquette J.-S., Moulin V., Tremblay P., Bernier V., Boutet M., Laviolette M., Auger F.A., Boulet L.-P. & Goulet F. (2004) Tissue-engineered human asthmatic bronchial equivalents. European Cells and Materials 7: 1-11

• Tissue-engineered human cornea are used to study corneal wound healing

  Source: Carrier P., Deschambeault A., Talbot M., Giasson C.J., Auger F.A., Guérin S.L. & Germain L. (2008) Characterization of wound reepithelialization using a new human tissue-engineered corneal wound healing model. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 49: 1376-85

• Human vascular and skin substitutes are used to study the molecular mechanisms of transendothelial migration of human cancer cells through a human endothelium layer. Skin substitutes may provide more relevant information because they include cell surface molecules that are present in human cells but not animal cells.

  Source: Tremblay P.L., Huot J. & Auger F.A. (2008) Mechanisms by which E-selectin regulates diapedesis of colon cancer cells under flow conditions. Cancer Research 68: 5167-5176

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