Monday, July 14, 2025
DENTON (UNT), Texas 鈥� Inside the 鈥檚 , researchers are making groundbreaking discoveries that can lead to safer and more
accurate heart treatment testing and open the door to more collaboration between engineers
and biomedical researchers.
, assistant professor in the 鈥檚 , and his team are creating tiny lab-grown artificial organs called organoids. What makes these organoids special is that they鈥檙e vascularized, meaning they feature a blood vessel network capable of mimicking a real network.
University of North Texas's Adam Yang with Ph.D. students Marcel El-Mokahal and Angello H. Gomez
鈥淲ithout blood vessels, we could not survive, similar to the organoids,鈥� Yang said. 鈥淏lood vessels are an essential part of the human heart and liver, but were generally lacking in organoid systems before this project. Now we can make organoids more realistic.鈥�
The project was a long and arduous one. Yang began the research in 2017 while working as a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University. He then joined UNT in 2020 and continued working on the relevant projects in his independent lab.
鈥淚t was exciting when I first started it because it was a new idea, especially adding the vessel network,鈥� Yang said. 鈥淏ut it was also challenging because people would ask why we needed to study this. We had to convince them it was important even if it would take years.鈥�
Yang said the support from UNT, Stanford, the American Heart Association, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other federal grants was essential. One critical source of support was the NIH G-RISE program, which allows doctoral candidates such as Angello Gomez to work on the project. The program supports people from underrepresented backgrounds earning their doctoral degrees in a biomedical field.
鈥淭here aren鈥檛 many people of our background in the field, so I鈥檓 really grateful for UNT supporting us,鈥� Gomez said.
Gomez joined the project about five years in and was responsible for vascularized cardiac organoid differentiation, data analysis, and validating the research by showing the organoids were reproducible.
鈥淚t really is groundbreaking because no other work before has built a fully vascularized network in the heart and liver organoids before,鈥� Gomez said. 鈥淭his was a big issue because you need this network to supply nutrients to the core of the organoids. We couldn鈥檛 grow them to a larger size because there鈥檇 be dead cells would form in the core.鈥�
Currently, the organoids mimic an embryonic heart about six and a half weeks after gestation and are about 2 millimeters in diameter. Yang and Gomez hope the reproducible method will create a bridge between engineers and cardiologists, and biomedical scientists.
鈥淭hese organoids can become an alternative to animal models,鈥� Yang said. 鈥淲e know the U.S. Food and Drug Administration鈥檚 Modernization Act 2.0/3.0 would like to move towards using organoids for drug response and genetic disease testing as an alternative when possible.鈥�
Yang stressed that the team isn鈥檛 looking to replace animal models but to be equivalent with them as alternatives at this moment.
鈥淭here was no previous publication to guide us on this project,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e got our guidance from previous animal and human studies in the biology field. It鈥檚 important we all work together.鈥�
The project has now been published in , one of the world鈥檚 top academic journals, and Yang says they鈥檙e beginning to see
more interest in their research in organoids. His team has already moved on to the
next phase of research, making the organoids even more like a human heart.
One of those improvements involves mimicking blood flow inside the heart, which is what Gomez is focusing on as part of his dissertation.
鈥淭hese organoids can鈥檛 produce blood cells, so mimicking blood flow means I鈥檓 subjecting the networks to the same kind of stress they鈥檇 face if fluid were moving through them and pushing against the tunnel walls,鈥� he said.
Gomez, who earned his bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees in biomedical engineering at UNT, has a personal reason motivating him in his studies.
鈥淚 had a cousin who had congenital heart disease, and he didn鈥檛 make it. It鈥檚 sad because he was in his teens,鈥� Gomez said. 鈥淚 want to use my skills and knowledge and contribute to lowering cardiovascular disease.鈥�
Gomez studies how the stress on the blood vessels could affect how the heart is formed inside an embryo. If he can reliably form cardiac organoids with a congenital heart disease, that can provide better insight into how it forms in embryos and then how to treat it with drugs or gene therapy.
鈥淎fter that, we can test drugs on the organoids without worrying about the effects on a living organism,鈥� Gomez said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 so many applications for these vascularized organoids, and I鈥檓 glad I can do my part.鈥�
From 鈥� Research