Fabrication of cellulose-gelatin based endothelialed vascular graft with SMCs/ADSCs seeding in bioreactor

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major health issue over the worldwide. The application of tissue engineering technology holds great promise for improving outcomes in CVD patients. Currently, the use of synthetic vascular grafts has several limitations, including thrombogenicity, increased risk of infection, and lack of growth potential. Natural vascular grafts have many advantages including excellent degradation, biocompatibility, but low mechanical property. Therefore, to form a biodegradable and antithrombotic vessel graft as temporary substitute is a problem to overcome in recent researches. The purpose of our study is using natural materials to rapidly form an endothelialized vascular graft in vitro. We utilized cellulose and gelatin to fabricate a composite scaffold. In order to enhance the mechanical property and decrease the degradation rate of scaffold, we added genipin to crosslink cellulose and gelatin. We mixed the cellulose, gelatin, and genipin solution, and injected solution into self-made mold to form tubular hydrogel. At last, we could obtain the tubular scaffold by freeze-drying. With regard to fabrication of vascular graft, the smooth muscle cells (SMCs) extracted from rabbit’s carotid arteries would be seeded into scaffold to secret the collagen and elastic fiber, while adipose derived stem cell (AD- SCs) would be seeded onto the lumen of scaffold as the source of endothelial cells. The material property of scaffold were analyzed by swelling test, biocompability, and FTIR. Moreover, we observe the SMCs distribution and extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition of vascular graft by histology.