OVERVIEW
Every tissue in the body needs a blood supply, and that demand is met by a network of interconnected blood vessels called the microcirculation. The microcirculation is a highly adaptable system of small blood vessels that are a tenth of the diameter of a human hair–-you need a microscope to see them–-and there are over a million microvessels in a single gram of tissue. Microvascular growth and remodeling are important processes in nearly every major disease, including diabetes, heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer. In our lab, we develop and use experimental and computational techniques to study and design new approaches for growing and regenerating injured and diseased tissues by manipulating the structure and composition of the microvasculature.