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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter April 28, 2017

Umbilical cord as human cell source for mitral valve tissue engineering – venous vs. arterial cells

  • Axel Malischewski , Ricardo Moreira , Luis Hurtado , Valentine Gesché , Thomas Schmitz-Rode , Stefan Jockenhoevel EMAIL logo and Petra Mela EMAIL logo

Abstract

Around 2% of the population in developed nations are affected by mitral valve disease and available valvular replacements are not designed for the atrioventricular position. Recently our group developed the first tissue-engineered heart valve (TEHV) specifically designed for the mitral position – the TexMi valve. The valve recapitulates the main components of the native valve, i.e. annulus, asymmetric leaflets and the crucial chordae tendineae. In the present study, we evaluated the human umbilical cord as a clinically applicable cell source for the TexMi valve. Valves produced with cells isolated from human umbilical cord veins (HUVs) and human umbilical cord arteries (HUAs) were conditioned for 21 days in custom-made bioreactors and evaluated in terms of extracellular matrix (ECM) composition and mechanical properties. In addition, static cell-laden fibrin discs were molded to investigate cell-mediated tissue contraction and differences in ECM production. HUA and HUV cells were able to deliver functional valves with a rich ECM composed mainly of collagen. Particularly noteworthy was the synthesis of elastin, which has been observed rarely in TEHV. The elastin synthesis was significantly higher in TexMi valves produced with HUV cells and therefore the HUV is considered to be the preferred cell source.


Corresponding authors: Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Stefan Jockenhoevel, Department of Biohybrid and Medical Textiles, AME-Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 20, 52074 Aachen, Germany, Phone/Fax: +49 (0)241-80-85640/-82442 and Petra Mela, PhD, Department of Biohybrid and Medical Textiles, AME-Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 20, 52074 Aachen, Germany, Phone/Fax: +49 (0)241-80-85640/-82442

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Department of Gynaecology at the University Hospital Aachen for kindly providing the human umbilical cords in accordance with the human subjects approval of the Ethics Committee. For technical assistance in the lab, the authors are grateful to Ms. Irina Appel, Ms. Julia Krapp and Ms. Anna Stukenberg. This research was funded by the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program FP7/2007–2013-ITN “TECAS”, under REA grant agreement no 317512, by the Integrated Interdisciplinary Institute of Technology for Medicine (I3TM) of RWTH Aachen University (Seed-Fund SF_14-4-08) and by the START-Program of the Medical Faculty of RWTH Aachen University (Fond #691348).

  1. Conflict of interest statement: No competing financial interests exist.

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Received: 2016-11-12
Accepted: 2017-3-1
Published Online: 2017-4-28
Published in Print: 2017-10-26

©2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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