Vocal fold scarring, caused by injury and inflammation, presents significant treatment
challenges. Tissue engineering might be a promising treatment for vocal fold
restoration or regeneration. It is important to investigate how scaffold properties
alter cell behavior instead of screening thousand of materials, which is fundamental
knowledge for rational scaffold design. This work studies how tuning only one
parameter, mechanical strength of the hydrogel scaffold, influences the extracellular
matrix production of encapsulated porcine vocal fold fibroblast (PVFF). PVFF cells
were encapsulated by photopolymerization in 10 wt%, 20 wt%, and 30 wt%
poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) hydrogels (MW 10,000), with the similar
biochemical environment and network structure but different mechanical properties.
Cell adhesive peptide, RGDS, was grafted into each hydrogel network to mimic a cell
adhesive environment. The glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) production per cell
increased from 10 wt% to 20 wt%, 30 wt% gels, with an increase in hydrogel
stiffness. The collagen production per cell increased from 10 wt% to 20 wt% gels
but no further increase occurred with the increasing modulus from 20 wt% to 30 wt%
gels. Interestingly, in hydrogels of intermediate modulus (20% PEGDA hydrogels),
the highest elastin per cell was observed compared with gels with higher and lower
storage modulus after day 30. Histological analysis showed GAGs, collagen and elastin were distributed pericellularly. However, the organization of collagen type I
appeared to be influenced by gel mechanical properties, which was confirmed by
immunohistological analysis. Furthermore, the immunohistological analysis
showed that the phenotype of PVFF is regulated by the stiffness of the PEG hydrogel.
This study demonstrates that different levels of VFF ECM formation may be
achieved by varying the mechanical properties of PEG hydrogels and validates a
systematic and controlled platform for further research of cell-biomaterials
interaction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1266 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Liao, Huimin |
| Contributors | Hahn, Mariah |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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