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There is a clinical need for better blood vessel substitutes, as current surgical procedures are limited by the availability of suitable autologous vessels and suboptimal behavior of synthetic grafts in small caliber arterial graft (5 mm) applications. The aim of the present study was to compare the mechanical properties of arterial and venous tissue-engineered vascular constructs produced by the self-assembly approach using cells extracted from either the artery or vein harvested from the same human umbilical cord. The production of a vascular construct comprised of a media and an adventitia (TEVMA) was achieved by rolling a continuous tissue sheet containing both smooth muscle cells and adventitial fibroblasts grown contiguously in the same tissue culture plate. Histology and immunofluorescence staining were used to evaluate the structure and composition of the extracellular matrix of the vascular constructs. The mechanical strength was assessed by uniaxial tensile testing, whereas viscoelastic behavior was evaluated by stepwise stress-relaxation and by cyclic loading hysteresis analysis. Tensile testing showed that the use of arterial cells resulted in stronger and stiffer constructs when compared with those produced using venous cells. Moreover, cyclic loading demonstrated that constructs produced using arterial cells were able to bear higher loads for the same amount of strain when compared with venous constructs. These results indicate that cells isolated from umbilical cord can be used to produce vascular constructs. Arterial constructs possessed superior mechanical properties when compared with venous constructs produced using cells isolated from the same human donor. This study highlights the fact that smooth muscle cells and fibroblasts originating from different cell sources can potentially lead to distinct tissue properties when used in tissue engineering applications.

The structural stability of skin substitutes is critical to avoid aesthetic and functional problems after grafting, such as contractures and hypertrophic scars. The present study was designed to assess the production steps having an influence on the contractile behaviour of the tissue-engineered skin made by the self-assembly approach, where keratinocytes are cultured on tissue-engineered dermis comprised of fibroblasts and the endogenous extracellular matrix they organized. Thus, different aspects were investigated, such as the assembly method of the engineered dermis (various sizes and anchoring designs) and the impact of epithelial cell differentiation (culture submerged in the medium or at the air-liquid interface). To evaluate the structural stability at the end of the production, the substitutes were detached from their anchorages and deposited on a soft substrate, and contraction was monitored over 1 week. Collected data were analysed using a mathematical model to characterize contraction. We observed that the presence of a differentiated epidermis significantly reduced the amount of contraction experienced by the engineered tissues, independently of the assembly method used for their production. When the epidermis was terminally differentiated, the average contraction was only 24 ± 4% and most of the contraction occurred within the first 12 h following deposition on the substrate. This is 2.2-fold less compared to when the epidermis was cultured under the submerged condition, or when tissue-engineered dermis was not overlaid with epithelial cells. This study highlights that the maturation at the air-liquid interface is a critical step in the reconstruction of a tissue-engineered skin that possesses high structural stability.

Mechanical strength and the production of extracellular matrix (ECM) are essential characteristics for engineered tissues designed to repair and replace connective tissues that are subject to stress and strain. In this study, dynamic mechanical stimulation (DMS) was investigated as a method to improve the mechanical properties of engineered tissues produced without the use of an exogenous scaffold, referred to as the self-assembly approach. This method, based exclusively on the use of human cells without any exogenous scaffolding, allows for the production of a tissue sheet comprised of cells and ECM components synthesized by dermal fibroblasts in vitro. A bioreactor chamber was designed to apply cyclic strain to engineered tissues in order to determine if dynamic culture had an impact on their mechanical properties and ECM organization. Fibroblasts were cultured in the presence of ascorbic acid for 35 days to promote ECM production and allow the formation of a tissue sheet. This sheet was grown on a custom-built anchoring system allowing for easy manipulation and fixation of the tissue in the bioreactor. Following the 35 day period, tissues were maintained for 3 days in static culture (SC), or subjected either to a static mechanical stimulation of 10% strain, or a dynamic DMS with a duty cycle of 10% uniaxial cyclic strain at 1Hz. ECM was characterized by histology, immunofluorescence labeling and Western blotting. Both static and dynamic mechanical stimulation induced the alignment of assessed cytoskeletal proteins and ECM components parallel to the axis of applied strain and increased the ECM content of the tissues compared to SC. Measurement of the tensile mechanical properties revealed that mechanical stimulation significantly increases both the ultimate tensile strength and tensile modulus of the engineered tissues when compared to the non-stimulated control. Moreover, we demonstrated that cyclic strain significantly increases these parameters when compared to a static-loading stimulation and that mechanical stimulation contributes to the establishment of anisotropy in the structural and mechanical properties of self-assembled tissue sheets.