Vascular diseases, such as cerebral vasospasm1,2, hypertension3, and atherosclerosis4, develop slowly, are typically chronic in nature, and involve dysfunctional force-generation by vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). We aim to study these slow-progressing vascular dysfunctions using in vitro methods with finer control of experimental conditions than in in vivo models. We have previously developed vascular muscular thin films (vMTFs) for measuring functional contractility of in vitro engineered cardiovascular tissues5, but this method has been limited to relatively short-term studies. Here, we present a substrate modification technique that expands our previous vMTF technique for long-term measurements.
While the endothelium is also critical in overall vascular function, engineered arterial lamellae provide a useful model system for assessing changes in vascular contractility during disease progression. To engineer a functional vascular disease tissue model, both the structure and function of the arterial lamella, the basic contractile unit of the vessel, must be recapitulated with high fidelity. Arterial lamellae are concentric, circumferentially-aligned sheets of contractile VSMCs separated by sheets of elastin6. Microcontact printing of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins onto polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates has been previously used to provide guidance cues for tissue organization to mimic aligned cardiovascular tissue5,7-10. However, tissues patterned using microcontact printing can lose integrity after 3-4 days in culture, limiting their applicability in chronic studies. This protocol provides a solution to this issue by replacing previous microcontact printing techniques with a new microfluidic deposition technique.
Genchi et al. modified PDMS substrates with genipin and found prolonged viability of myocytes up to one month in culture11. Here, we use a similar approach to extend culture of patterned vascular smooth muscle cells on PDMS. Genipin, a natural hydrolytic derivative of the gardenia fruit, is a desirable candidate for substrate modification due to its relatively low toxicity compared to similar crosslinking agents and its increasing use as a biomaterial in the fields of tissue repair12,13 and ECM modification14,15. In this protocol, fibronectin is utilized as a cell guidance cue, as in previous microcontact printing methods; however, genipin is deposited onto PDMS substrates prior to fibronectin patterning. Thus, as cells degrade the patterned matrix, newly synthesized ECM from attached VSMCs can bind to the genipin-coated PDMS substrate.
This protocol utilizes a microfluidic delivery device for two-step genipin and ECM deposition. The design of the microfluidic device mimics microcontact printing patterns used for engineered arterial lamellae in previous studies16. Thus, we expect this protocol to yield arterial lamellae mimics that successfully recapitulate the highly-aligned in vivo structure and contractile function of arterial lamellae. We also evaluate tissue contractility to confirm that genipin is a suitable substrate modification compound for long-term in vitro vascular disease models.