Flow State

Cells and tissues grown in the lab can be a bit like a bathtub in a showroom: a fair representation, but of limited use until they’re properly plumbed in. A new development aims to solve this with a platform to grow human blood vessel networks, connected to tiny pumps (dubbed Vascularized In Vitro Organ Systems or VIVOS), which provide lab-grown tissues with a more realistic approximation of vascular flow. The vessels can integrate with a broad range of lab-grown mini organs including lung and cerebral organoids (pictured, brain cells in green and yellow, vascular network labelled red). They allow direct study of how blood flow impacts cells, and the team observed how mechanical forces in the flow cause changes in lining cells that result in vessel networks reshaping. The researchers also modelled vascular malformation in a condition called hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia, illustrating its potential for direct disease investigations as well as supporting more realistic lab-grown environments.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Tiger H.Z. Jian and colleagues
• Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in bioRxiv, March 2026 (not peer reviewed)