The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team got the cells to stretch and form tubes along a grooved template, Advanced Materials reports.
Now they plan to produce capillaries which could be tested in animals.
Researchers have already managed to make wider blood vessels from scratch, but the formation of the tiny diameter capillaries needed to create a blood supply within other tissues and organs is far more challenging.
The US scientists claim to have made progress towards this, using a "nanoscale" template into which stem cells called endothelial progenitor cells are placed.
The cells detected the grooves and elongated themselves along them, aligning themselves in the same direction.
Adding a gel made of growth factors allowed the cells to grow outwards, forming a series of tiny tubes running parallel to each other.
While these tubes are not yet ready to be put inside a human body, the researchers say they are "very excited" by their potential.
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