The creation of musculoskeletal tissue represents an alternative for the replacement of soft tissue in reconstructive surgery.\nHowever, most of the approaches of creating artificial tissue have their limitations in the size as the maximally obtainable dimension\nof bioartificial tissue (BAT) is limited due to the lack of supporting vessels within the 3-dimensional construct. The seeded\nmyoblasts require high amounts of perfusion, oxygen, and nutrients to survive. To achieve this, we developed a 3-dimensional\nscaffold which features the epigastric artery as macroscopic core vessel inside the BAT in a rat model (perfused group, n = 4) and a\ncontrol group (n = 3) without the epigastric vessels and, therefore, without perfusion. The in vivo monitoring of the transplanted\nmyoblasts was assessed by bioluminescence imaging and showed both the viability of the epigastric artery within the 3-dimensional\nconstruct and again that cell survival in vivo is highly depending on the blood supply with the beginning of capillarization within\nthe BAT seven days after transplantation in the perfused group. However, further studies focussing on the matrix improvement\nwill be necessary to create a transplantable BAT with the epigastric artery as anastomosable vessel.
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