While tissue-engineering approaches of heart valves have made great strides towards creating functional tissues in vitro, the instruments used, named bioreactors, cannot efficiently integrate multiple stimuli to accurately emulate the physiological microenvironment. To address this, we conceptually designed and built a bioreactor system that applied a range of mechanical tension conditions, modulated matrix stiffness, and introduced biochemical signals in a combinatorial and high-throughput manner. Proof-of-concept experiments on PAVIC-seeded hydrogels were performed to assess the independent and combined effects of tensile strain, matrix stiffness and TGF-β1 on myofibroblast differentiation by measuring α-SMA expression, a marker that indicates a disease-associated phenotype. We found that matrix stiffness and TGF-β1 significantly increased α-SMA levels (p < 0.001), while the effect of mechanical strain was only significant on soft gels (~12 kPa) without TGF-β1. This study therefore demonstrated independent and integrated effects of multiple stimuli in regulating key cellular events in the aortic valve.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/32525 |
| Date | 24 July 2012 |
| Creators | Beca, Bogdan |
| Contributors | Simmons, Craig Alexander, Sun, Yu |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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