a few references has been added.

Thanks,

Howon

Hi Nachiket,

Thanks for bringing up very interesting topic. I’m also interested in how microvascular network influences tumor cells or diseased cells, but myself don’t have direct experience in biology.

As a micro/nano manufacturing group, our work has focused more on fabricating artificial microvascular network and making use of it in more interesting applications.

For example, our previous work demonstrated that bioreactor with permeable microvascular network can enhance cell proliferation and viability by providing a mean to expedite material exchange (J. Biomedical Microdevices, 2009, 11, 1309)

Also, we used embedded microfluidic network for direct solvent delivery to locally control hydrogel swelling for motion generation, mimicking principles for plant motions. (Soft Matter, 2010, 6, 4342)

I hope there will be someone else who can follow up your question on this blog.

Thanks,

Howon

Adrian Bejan gave a talk on some of his ideas on heat transfer etc. using these concepts.

See http://www.nonoscience.info/2011/07/10/design-in-engineering-and-nature/

-- Biswajit

This is a very interesting topic. Could you please give a list of references? Thanks.

Hi Howon,

Do you know if anyone has imaged the microvasculature of cancerous vs non-cancerous tumors? Could you point me to an article about this? Due to angiogenesis cancerous tumors are known to have a richer network of blood vessels.

Thanks,

Nachiket