Making a Muscle: Engineered fibers grow in the lab and in mice

In a first for tissue engineering, scientists have created slivers of muscle that produce their own network of blood vessels. The accomplishment may provide insights for generating more-complex tissues, such as those that make up hearts and livers.

During the past 2 decades, scientists have had some success engineering skin, cartilage, and other thin tissues, which can recruit blood vessels from surrounding areas, or become vascularized, once in the body.