Differentiation of vascular smooth muscle cell sheet into contractile phenotype for vascular tissue engineering application

Research Design

Background

In tissue engineering approaches, co-culture systems are routinely used in in-vivo settings. Co-culture systems consist of two or more different cell types that are closely cultured together. This helps in mimicking and replicating the in-vivo settings. This helps in increased viability of such cells compared to single or targeted cell (which needs to be reared).
Endothelial cells (ECs) are found in the luminal surface of blood vessels. In previous studies, it has been shown that damage or intervention to endothelial changes the phenotype of the associated smooth muscle cells in the lumen f the blood vessels. Angioplasty and radiotherapy cause various signaling cascades in ECs which leads to cross-talk in the SMCs. It is noted that ECs can significantly induce the phosphatidyl inositol pathway in SMCs, which changes their morphology. The SMCs become more proliferative and migrate in the lumen leading to atherosclerosis ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [7, 8]. These changes within the lumen impact its tonicity and increase the peripheral resistance leading to an increase in blood pressure. During vascular injury, a primary feature of atherosclerotic plaques is the synthetic state transited SMCs. They change their morphology from contractile state and become proliferative, which secretes excess ECM, leading to the narrowing of arteries ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [9, 10].
For instance, in angioplasty removal of diseased plaques from the blo…