Porcine small diameter arterial extracellular matrix supports endothelium formation and media remodeling forming a promising vascular engineered biograft.

Patients with small caliber artery disorders, often lack the suitable autologous tissue needed for bypassing diseased vessels or for other vascular reconstructive procedures. We propose to decellularize small caliber porcine carotid artery, then recellularize it with vascular cells and function as scaffold for tissue engineering vascular graft replacements. Based on a modified decellularization method developed in our laboratory, the cellular contents of small caliber (<4 mm) arteries were carefully removed using an enzymatic and detergent decellularization procedure. Decellularization efficiency was evaluated using histology and scanning electron microscopy, which demonstrated the absence of cellular remains in the artery wall. Proteomic analysis of the scaffold revealed that the decellularized vessels retained their major extracellular matrix protein composition. Mechanical analyses revealed no significant change in the extracellular matrix (ECM) properties versus the native artery. The decellularized artery was reseeded with human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and cultured under static or dynamic conditions in a perfusion bioreactor designed and developed in our laboratory for these studies. Dynamic co-culturing of SMC and HUVEC, in this custom-made perfusion bioreactor, led to a higher infiltration, migration and proliferation of SMC toward the media and to a more confluent endothelium formation on the luminal surface when compared with static culturing. In addition, vascular media remodeling by SMC correlated to the expression of remodeling related genes assessed by real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and HUVEC cultivation contributed to the remodeling of several basement membrane proteins stained using immunohistochemistry. All together, these findings indicate the potential of such decellularized arterial ECM for future small caliber vascular graft reconstruction therapies.