Construction Of Tissue-engineered Arterial Blood Vessel Using Decellular Cord Blood Vessel Scaffolds

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in thewest. Autologous tissues are presently preferred for surgical grafts of cardiovasculardisease but have the disadvantage of being insufficient in quantity or of poor quality.In contrast， the use of allografts or xenografts for cardiovascular repair carries therisks of severe immune rejection and disease transmission， which limit their clinicalapplication. Tissue engineering is an emerging multidisciplinary frontierscience involving molecular biology， cell biology， bioengineering， andclinical medicine that is likely to revolutionize the ways to improvethe health and quality of life for millions of people worldwide byrestoring， maintaining or enhancing tissue and organ function. This experiment aimsto determine if hair follicle mesenchymal stem cells can be used as seed cells incombination with an acellular umbilical artery as scaffold material to construct asmall tissue-engineered vascular graft.Materials&Methods: We isolated mesenchymal stem cells from human hairfollicle (HF-MSC). The HF-MSC display CD44， CD90， CD73and CD105andexhibit multipotency toward to adipocytes， osteoblasts and condrocytes underappropriate culture conditions. Very promisingly HF-MSC expressed vascular smoothmuscle specific markers: ɑ-actin， caloponin and myosin heavy chain. The expressionof ɑ-actin and caloponin of HF-MSC significantly increased when cultured in thepresence of TGF-β， shift from30%to90%by flow cytometry analysis， whichprovides potential smooth muscle cells (HF-SMC) for cardiovascular tissueengineering. Cord blood vessel is a rich source of native human biomaterials，providing unlimited material sources for engineering artificial organs， in particularfor engineering cardio vasculature as their components， histological structure andmechanical properties are very similar to cardio vasculature. We created decellularsmall diameter blood vessel scaffolds by digesting the arterial cord blood vessels withtrypsin and SDS. The decellular arterial scaffolds (De-AS) remained the main extracellular matrix， such as， collagen， proteoglycans and elastin and mechanicalproperties by histochemistry and biochemistry， compared to their native counterparts.We seeded HF-SMC into the De-AS.Results: The HF-SMC in the De-AS migrated approximately to the2/3of theDe-AS from the lumen， distributed circumferentially and still expressed ɑ-actin andcalponin， laying the base for the generation of functional vasoreactivity in responseto constrictors.Conclusion: In this study we have allowed hair follicle mesenchymal stem cellsto grow on an acellular umbilical artery. With this approach we have successfullyconstructed a tissue-engineered blood vessel.