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Vascular smooth muscle cells can be circumferentially aligned inside a channel using tunable gelatin microribbons
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Vascular smooth muscle cells can be circumferentially aligned inside a channel using tunable gelatin microribbons

Yusuf Mastoor, Mahsa Karimi, Michael Sun, Fereshteh Ahadi, Pattie Mathieu, Mingyue Fan, Lin Han, Li-Hsin Han and Alisa Morss-Clyne
Biofabrication, v 17(1)
18 Oct 2024
PMID: 39423834
url
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11583946/pdf/nihms-2032825.pdfView
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Abstract

Artery-on-a-chip Hydrogel Microribbons Cell alignment Vascular smooth muscle cells
The gold standard to measure arterial health is vasodilation in response to nitric oxide (NO). Vasodilation is generally measured via pressure myography of arteries isolated from animal models. However, animal arteries can be difficult to obtain and may have limited relevance to human physiology. It is, therefore, critical to engineer human cell-based arterial models capable of contraction. Vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) must be circumferentially aligned around the vessel lumen to contract the vessel, which is challenging to achieve in a soft blood vessel model. In this study, we used gelatin microribbons to circumferentially align SMCs inside a hydrogel channel. To accomplish this, we created tunable gelatin microribbons of varying stiffnesses and thicknesses and assessed how SMCs aligned along them. We then wrapped soft, thick microribbons around a needle and encapsulated them in a gelatin methacryloyl hydrogel, forming a microribbon-lined channel. Finally, we seeded SMCs inside the channel and showed that they adhered best to fibronectin and circumferentially aligned in response to the microribbons. Together, these data show that tunable gelatin microribbons can be used to circumferentially align SMCs inside a channel. This technique can be used to create a human artery-on-a-chip to assess vasodilation via pressure myography, as well as to align other cell types for 3D in vitro models.

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#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Engineering, Biomedical
Materials Science, Biomaterials
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