The evaluation of endothelial cell migration for proper endothelialization in artificial blood vessels

Abstract

[한글]

[영문]The main reason of restenosis that happened after bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty or stent placement is the damage of the endothelium, which generally forms the inner lining of the blood vessel walls. A rapid reendothelialization of the blood vessel walls is crucial for the prevention of thrombosis and intimal hyperplasia. Endothelial cell migration is critical and initiating the repair of injured vessels. Most of the researches on EC migration were completed under static conditions, but endothelial cells in vivo are under flow condition. Shear stress can induce many changes in endothelial cells, including alterations in cell shape, orientation, proliferation, and the reorganization of cytoskeleton etc. In this study, we set up the parallel plate chamber system to evaluate endothelial cell migration under flow condition. In wound closure model, the cells in the upstream part more migrated into the wound area under flow condition compared with in the absence of flow, while shear stress inhibited cell migration in the direction to the wound area in downstream part. In individual cell migration model, human umbilical endothelial cells started to migrate in the direction of flow at 8 dyne/cm2. We observed focal adhesions formation at the leading edge of the cell in the direction of flow and the alignment of actin cytoskeleton at 8 dyne/cm2. Also the flow perfusion system was estabilished for the effective cell seeding into a three dimensional scaffold. In this study, we found that under flow condition a better and more uniform cell distribution throughout the matrix was achieved than under static condition.This study has demonstrated the possiblity to evaluate and analyze cell migration using the parallel plate chamber system and we may predict in vivo cell migration under flow condition based on these results. It may give some help to design stent or artificial blood vessels.