| Children with congenital heart defects and patients with faulty or failing valves have the need for a suitable aortic heart valve replacement. Current treatment options have several downfalls and heavy investigation is being done into the design of an engineered valve to find an alternative that would alleviate many of these issues. Understanding the physiology of how cells interact in vivo is crucial to the construction of such valve. This study investigates the effect of cyclic strain in aortic valve endothelial cells on the adhesion molecules, PECAM-1, β1-Integrin, VE-Cadherin and Vinculin. Experiments found that cyclic strain plays a role in the development of cell/cell and cell/extracellular matrix adhesions and junctions and is extremely important in the pre-conditioning of a tissue engineered construct. Without this strain the new valve would be more susceptible to inflammation, injury or possible failure after being implanted into the patient. |
