Influence of mechanical stimulation in the development of a medial equivalent tissue-engineered vascular construct...

Vascular regeneration in the area of small diameter (<6 mm) vessels via the tissue-engineering approach has been in focus for some time now. In this study, we report the development and evaluation of a tissue-engineered medial equivalent using gelatin-g-vinyl acetate co-polymer (GeVAc) as the scaffold material. GeVAc was synthesized by co-polymerizing gelatin and vinyl acetate monomer in the presence of AIBN as the initiator and subjected to physico-chemical characterization. A porous 3-D scaffold with open interconnected pores was then produced from GeVAc. The scaffold is non-cytotoxic with good smooth muscle cell proliferative capacity and high cell viability. Influence of smooth muscle cell phenotype in response to these scaffolds has been studied under mechanical stimulation. It was found that the cell-seeded tubular GeVAc constructs under mechanical stimulation preferentially supported the contractile phenotype of smooth muscle cells, as evidenced by the elevated expression of contractile protein markers such as alpha-SMA, calponin and SM22α. The mechanical properties and the ECM secretion were also increased on applying the mechanical stimulation. Hence, the results showed the promising potential of the GeVAc scaffolds in the regeneration of the medial equivalent tissue-engineered vascular construct.