Efficient metabolism in bioengineered tissues requires a robust vascular system to provide healthy microenvironments to the cells and stroma. Such networks form spontaneously during embryogenesis from randomly distributed endothelial cells. There is a need to bioengineer endothelial cells so that network formation and operation is optimal for synthetic tissues.
This work introduces a computational model that simulates de novo vascular development and assesses the effectiveness of the network in delivering nutrients and extracting waste from tissue. A genetic algorithm was employed to identify parameter values of the vaculogenesis model that lead to the most efficient and robust vascular structures. These parameter values control the behavior of cell-level mechanisms such as chemotaxis and adhesion.
This work combines three different projects to obtain its goal. The mentioned projects all of which are in my Github repositories include VascularNetworkOptimization, 2DCellFactory and cDynomics.