Construction Of The Natural Scaffold Model From Tissue Engineered Small Blood Vessels

Objective: To establish the natural scaffold model from tissueengineered small blood vessels.Methods: Caudal arteries from thirty-four Wistar rats, with theaverage length 12.08±1.69cm, were make into acellular smallblood vessel scaffolds. On the base of using routine tissuestaining technique, TritonX-100 shed cell intravascular stentmethod, Romeis elasticity fibers staining methodMallory-Heidenhain collagen fibers staining method, DeRio-Horetga reticular fiber staining method and electronmicroscopy, observed the endothelial cells and smooth musclecells of correlate vessel wall and utilize immunohistochemistrytechnique to detect antigenicity. After the treatment of takingoff cells by tissue engineering technique, a natural scaffoldform vessel would be established. Some scaffolds were observedby electron microscopy, and others were transplanted between thecut ends of ear central arteries of male Japanese big ear whiterabbits. Results: Average external diameter was 0.74±0.08mm in proximal,and 0.55±0.08mm in distal end of rat caudal arteries. The smallblood vessel scaffolds had shin wall, white and soft, composedof fibrous tissue without cells. On the tunica intima surfaceand tunica media the fibrous tissues arrayed densely in agrid-like pattern. After transplant, the blood flowed throughthe scaffold at once, and keep flowing freely in 24 hours. Thepulsation of the transplanted artery could be touched easily,and without blood leakage could be found.Conclusion:1. Acellular tissue matrix of caudal artery of Wistar rats is usedas a small blood vessel scaffold in this experiment.2. The scaffold is mainly constructed by collagen fiber, withelastic fiber and reticular fiber arranged inthree-dimensional network.3. The reticular fiber focus on the tunica intima surfacewithin the tissue engineered small blood vessel scaffold.4. The heterogeneous small blood vessel natural scaffolds arecomposed of fibrous tissue, and at least can sustained thearterypulse pressure between 24 hours.5. It is better to suture the blood vessels by sleeve anastomosis.