Smooth muscle cell-like support cells accelerate the autologous endothelialization of a polyurethane scaffold for vascular engineering.

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

The endothelialization of vascular scaffolds, such as small-diameter grafts, has long been an obstacle in the tissue engineering field. The absence of an abundant and expandable autologous endothelial cell source, and of a viable strategy to facilitate their rapid growth, have prevented clinical adoption of endothelialized grafts. At the same time, the importance of a confluent endothelium and mechanisms to prevent graft occlusion have been recognized. Here, we report on the rapid, patient-derived endothelialization of a non-protein coated, biocompatible, and degradable polyurethane scaffold, on which adipose tissue-derived endothelial cells are co-cultured with adipose tissue-derived stromal cells, having a smooth muscle cell-like phenotype. The co-cultured endothelia are characterized using proteomic, genomic, biochemical, and histologic analyses, which demonstrate that they maintain a functional phenotype, as well as fewer inflammatory characteristics than endothelial cells cultured without support cells. Importantly, we also show that this co-culture with endothelial cells does not compromise the differentiated, contractile phenotype of, or extracellular matrix production by, the pre-differentiated support cells. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the differentiated smooth muscle cell phenotype, when combined with human monocytes, best recapitulates the protein composition of

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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