The liver is a huge organ that essentially consists of cells for detoxification, albumin production and about 100 other important functions. These cells are designated hepatocytes (there are no "liver" cells). In order to make the liver efficient, it also consists of large network of small blood vessels. The blood vessels are lined with endothelial cells and underneath them the hepatocytes. To put thing into perspective, the surface of all small blood vessels are about the size or several football fields all organized into an organ of the size a 1.5 Litre milk carton. Impressive and necessary but also one of the major challenges. In this project we will explore several routes to create these large blood vessels like networks. This is hereafter designated a scaffold in which the cells can develop, live and perform its function. In fact we need to build two independent networks where one network will be "blood" while the other will take care of removing the waste. In nature waste is collected and secreted into the intestine as bile. So the cells should be sandwiched between two fluidic networks.
Projects related to this is the project "Development of tissue engineering scaffold" performed by PhD Student Soumyaranjan Mohanty at DTU Nanotech and the project "Development of culture conditions for a functional bioartificial liver" performed by Postdoc Mette Hemmingsen at DTU Nanotech.