The penetration and phenotype modulation of smooth muscle cells on surface heparin modified poly(ɛ‐caprolactone) vascular scaffold

Abstract

The tubular porous poly(ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL) scaffold was fabricated by electrospinning. After then, the scaffold's surface was firstly eroded by hexyldiamine to endow amine group, and heparin was covalently grafted to the surface to get surface heparin modified scaffold (ShPCL scaffold). It was found that ShPCL scaffold can induce smooth muscle cells (SMCs) to penetrate the scaffold surface, while the SMCs cannot penetrate the surface of PCL scaffold. Subsequently, the rabbit SMCs were seeded on the ShPCL scaffold and cultured for 14 days. It was found the expression of α-smooth muscle actin in ShPCL scaffold maintained much higher level than that in culture plate, which implied the SMC differentiation in ShPCL scaffold. Furthermore, the immunefluorescence staining of the cross-sections of ShPCL scaffold exhibited the expression of calponin in ShPCL scaffold can be detected after 7 and 14 days, whereas the expression of smooth muscle myosin heavy chain can also be detected at 14 days. These results proved that penetrated SMCs preferably differentiated in to contractile phenotype. The successful SMC penetration and the contractile phenotype expression implied ShPCL scaffold is a suitable candidate for regenerating smooth muscle layer in vascular tissue engineering. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 105A: 2806-2815, 2017.

Vascular Remodeling Process of Heparin-Conjugated Poly(ε-Caprolactone) Scaffold in a Rat Abdominal Aorta Replacement Model

“…In addition, it was found that heparin could inhibit SMC proliferation and upregulate the expression of contractile SMC phenotype markers [34]. Similar results have been reported in our previous studies as heparin-conjugated PCL scaffolds can induce SMC penetration through the scaffold surface while the SMCs cannot penetrate the surface of pure PCL scaffold [21]. Our study showed SMCs and collagen were the main components of neointimal formation (Fig.…”

“…As the phosphorylation and calcium concentration change in the environment, calponin can regulate the binding of actins and myosin by capturing or releasing actins which could modulate the contraction and relaxation of SMCs. Therefore, the expression of calponin can be used to indicate the contractile phenotype of SMCs [21]. Our results exhibited that the coverage and area of the contractile SMCs increased during the course of 6 months and it indicated the grafts gradually remodeled to mimic the native aorta artery.…”

“…In addition, the hydrophobic surface was less favorable for the EC adhesion and proliferation [30]. After combination with heparin, heparin-conjugated PCL scaffolds attained high positively charged amine groups and promotion of hydrophilicity [18, 21]. In the present study, anti-CD34 antibody and anti-vWF antibody were used for the markers of ECs.…”

“…PCL-HMD-H scaffold was prepared as described in our previous study [21]. The pure PCL scaffolds were immersed in isopropanol solution which involved 10 wt% HMD for 1 h at 37°C to break the ester bond of fibers, then the solution was washed 3 times with deionized water.…”

“…In this study, heparin-conjugated PCL was fabricated as described in our previous study [21]. The purpose of this study was to investigate the biocompatibility and remolding process of the PCL-hexamethylenediamine-heparin (PCL-HMD-H) scaffold in a small animal model of high-pressure circulation during the course of 6 months.…”