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Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Ex Situ Normothermic Machine Perfusion of Donor Livers
Published on: May 26, 2015
Pathological Process of Prompt Connection between Host and Donor Tissue Vasculature Causing Rapid Perfusion of the
Sachiko Sekiya1, Shunichi Morikawa2, Taichi Ezaki3
1Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Tokyo 162-8666, Japan. sekiya.sachiko@twmu.ac.jp.
Abstract:
The shortage of donors for transplantation therapy is a serious issue worldwide. Tissue engineering is considered a potential solution to this problem. Connection and perfusion in engineered tissues after transplantation is vital for the survival of the transplanted tissue, especially for tissues requiring blood perfusion to receive nutrients, such as the heart. A myocardial cell sheet containing an endothelial cell network structure was fabricated in vitro using cell sheet technology. Transplantation of the three-dimensional (3D) tissue by layering myocardial sheets could ameliorate ischemic heart disease in a rat model. The endothelial cell network in the 3D tissue was able to rapidly connect to host vasculature and begin perfusion within 24 h after transplantation. In this review, we compare and discuss the engineered tissue⁻host vasculature connection process between tissue engineered constructs with hydrogels and cell sheets by histological analysis. This review provides information that may be useful for further improvements of in vivo engineered tissue vascularization techniques.
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