Smooth muscle cells from skin perforator vessels as a new tool for vascular research

Vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC) comprise the medial layer of blood vessels and are responsible for maintaining vascular tone. Ordinarily quiescent and contractile, SMC can dedifferentiate into different phenotypes following injury or in disease states such as atherosclerosis and are thus valuable research tools for examining these conditions. The isolation of commonly used SMC types, such as those from the aorta or saphenous vein (SV), require clinical links or commercial supply and are rarely pathology-free. The skin is highly vascularised with perforator (Perf) vessels that protrude through the skin layers to feed the tissue. Whilst these vessels can be sourced from clinical procedures (e.g. reconstructive surgery), they are also available from elective cosmetic procedures such as abdominoplasty which could provide blood vessels unaffected by an underlying pathology. This paper describes the isolation of Perf-SMC for the first time, using a cost-effective explant technique. Explanted cells were confirmed as SMC by co-staining for alpha smooth muscle actin and smooth muscle myosin heavy chain. Phenotypic characteristics of Perf-SMC (cell morphology, proliferation, and multinucleation) were comparable to those from commonly used SMC from alternative vascular sources (SV-SMC and umbilical artery SMC). Furthermore, Perf-SMC were stable in culture up until at least passage 9 with no alteration in morphological characteristics or evidence of replication-induced phenotypic change. In summary, this paper describes an effective, efficient and low-cost method for isolating SMC from skin perforator vessels that may be a useful tool for the future examination of SMC behaviour from both pathological and healthy skin.