Morphological Control of Endothelial Tube Formation by Three-Dimensional Lane-Shaped Patterns

This paper describes an analytical platform to control endothelial tube formation by patterning cells and extracellular matrix (ECM) within 3D lane-shaped pattern. By using PDMS groove patterns ( 50-250 μm in width and height, several millimeters in length), human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were patterned three-dimensionally in collagen gel. The patterned HUVECs spontaneously form endothelial vascular tissues, but their morphologies can be controlled by the dimensions of patterns, cell densities, ECMs, etc. We succeeded in forming vascular tube tissues, and found that a number of branches of the vascular tissues depends on the dimensions of 3D-patterns. We believe that our culture system could be a useful tool for understanding the tube formation behavior of endothelial cells and for creating 3D-shape-controlled vascular tissues as a quantitative model in vitro.