Smooth muscle cells for vascular engineering

Interaction of human smooth muscle cells with nanofibrous scaffolds: Effect of fiber orientation on cell adhesion, proliferation, and functional gene expression

Poly(ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL) and PCL-gelatin random and aligned nanofibers with diameters in the range of 200-400 nm were developed through electrospinning. Mechanical properties of aligned PCL and PCL-gelatin nanofibers were compared, and it was found that aligned PCL nanofibers showed significantly higher tensile strength and Young's modulus than the PCL-gelatin nanofiber system (p < 0.05). The in vitro degradation of aligned nanofibers showed that PCL-gelatin nanofibers degrade faster than aligned PCL nanofibers. Further, human smooth muscle cells were cultured on the random and aligned PCL-gelatin nanofibers and evaluated for adhesion, orientation, morphology, viability, proliferation and gene expression. Our results demonstrate that PCL-gelatin promotes higher cell adhesion and proliferation than the PCL nanofibers after 3, 7, and 10 days of culture. Aligned topography favored orientation of the cells along their directions and cell stretching was better in aligned nanofibers than the random nanofibers. The upregulation of α-actin, myosin heavy chain, collagen type I, and elastin genes demonstrate good cell-matrix interactions in both random and aligned scaffolds. Therefore, the present study concludes that aligned PCL-gelatin nanofibers could serve as potential scaffolding for culture of smooth muscle cells and may promote functional regeneration of tubular organs.