Abstract: Tissues and organs are sculpted by mechanical forces during embryonic development, and require perfusion for growth. Organoids provide remarkable in-vitro models to understand these processes, and to generate biomimetic platforms for translational applications. However it has been challenging to reproduce the range, scale and temporal control over tissue cytoarchitecture in-vitro. In this talk I will discuss our ongoing efforts in developing customized actuation devices and magnetic nanoparticle-based approaches which allow us to spatiotemporally control and manipulate mechanical forces, and how we use these technologies to study force-mediated neural patterning and morphogenesis.. I will also discuss our microengineered vascularization strategies, which present opportunities to generate more biomimetic tissues towards precision medicine. Our work with organoid-based models of neural tube patterning and morphogenesis suggests that the way forward towards engineering reproducible and scalable patterned tissue constructs may involve harnessing cells’ inherent capacities for self-organization by providing mechanically active and vascularized microenvironments.
