In the lung, small blood vessels and capillaries continuously experience cyclic mechanical strain resulting from the rhythmic breathing motions and from the intraluminal blood pressure. These mechanical forces deform these vessels and alter the physiology, morphology, biochemistry and gene expression of endothelial cells. However, the exact mechanisms of the mechanical signal transduction into biological responses remain to be clarified.
Existing in vitro models used to investigate the effect of mechanical stretch on endothelial layers are limited to two-dimensional cell culture platforms, which poorly mimic the typical three-dimensional structure of the vessels. For this reason, the ARTORG Center has developed a new perfusable 3D vasculature model on a chip.
One of the major findings of this study is that a 3D microvasculature can be exposed to a much higher mechanical cyclic stress level than previously reported with 2D models without any dysfunction of the endothelial barrier. These new results corroborate clinical data from the literature obtained with computed tomography. This new model thus mimics the in-vivo situation more closely than standard 2D models and in addition demonstrates that the dynamic breathing movements is an important parameter of the cellular environment.
