Boccafoschi Francesca, Ramella Martina, Sibillano Teresa, De Caro Liberato, Giannini Cinzia, Comparelli Roberto, Bandiera Antonella, Cannas Mario
Department of Health Sciences, University of Piemonte Orientale "A. Avogadro", 28100, Novara, Italy.
J Biomed Mater Res A. 2015 Mar;103(3):1218-30. doi: 10.1002/jbm.a.35257. Epub 2014 Aug 28.
The replacement of diseased tissues with biological substitutes with suitable biomechanical properties is one of the most important goal in tissue engineering. Collagen represents a satisfactory choice for scaffolds. Unfortunately, the lack of elasticity represents a restriction to a wide use of collagen for several applications. In this work, we studied the effect of human elastin-like polypeptide (HELP) as hybrid collagen-elastin matrices. In particular, we studied the biomechanical properties of collagen/HELP scaffolds considering several components involved in ECM remodeling (elastin, collagen, fibrillin, lectin-like receptor, metalloproteinases) and cell phenotype (myogenin, myosin heavy chain) with particular awareness for vascular tissue engineering applications. Elastin and collagen content resulted upregulated in collagen-HELP matrices, even showing an improved structural remodeling through the involvement of proteins to a ECM remodeling activity. Moreover, the hybrid matrices enhanced the contractile activity of C2C12 cells concurring to improve the mechanical properties of the scaffold. Finally, small-angle X-ray scattering analyses were performed to enable a very detailed analysis of the matrices at the nanoscale, comparing the scaffolds with native blood vessels. In conclusion, our work shows the use of recombinant HELP, as a very promising complement able to significantly improve the biomechanical properties of three-dimensional collagen matrices in terms of tensile stress and elastic modulus.
用具有合适生物力学特性的生物替代物替换病变组织是组织工程中最重要的目标之一。胶原蛋白是支架的一个令人满意的选择。不幸的是，缺乏弹性限制了胶原蛋白在多种应用中的广泛使用。在这项工作中，我们研究了人弹性蛋白样多肽（HELP）作为胶原蛋白 - 弹性蛋白混合基质的作用。特别是，我们研究了胶原蛋白/HELP支架的生物力学特性，考虑了参与细胞外基质重塑的几种成分（弹性蛋白、胶原蛋白、原纤维蛋白、凝集素样受体、金属蛋白酶）和细胞表型（生肌调节因子、肌球蛋白重链），尤其关注血管组织工程应用。胶原蛋白 - HELP基质中弹性蛋白和胶原蛋白含量上调，甚至通过蛋白质参与细胞外基质重塑活动显示出改善的结构重塑。此外，混合基质增强了C2C12细胞的收缩活性，有助于改善支架的力学性能。最后，进行了小角X射线散射分析，以便在纳米尺度上对基质进行非常详细的分析，将支架与天然血管进行比较。总之，我们的工作表明，重组HELP作为一种非常有前景的补充物，能够在拉伸应力和弹性模量方面显著改善三维胶原蛋白基质的生物力学性能。
