The growing of tissues in culture is an important target of many areas of biomedical research; we aim to develop the artificial blood supply necessary for this goal.

One of the major limitations in culturing complex tissues or organs is the lack of vascularization in the cultured tissue. Development of a functional capillary bed could overcome this problem. The zebrafish is a promising model for in vitro vasculogenesis and angiogenesis studies, as a replacement for currently used mammalian models. However, the culture of endothelial cells from this species is not well characterized. Here, we test different culture strategies, medium supplementations and culture substrates for their effect on the generation of putative endothelial (fli:GFP⁺ and kdrl:GFP⁺) cells and vascular morphogenesis in zebrafish blastocyst cell derived embryoid body culture. We are also working to develop a perfused vascular model from zebrafish embryoid body culture, by using microfluidic culture technology. This study will bring us closer to understanding the formation of zebrafish vascular networks in vitro.

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