血管平滑筋細胞の配列・組織化培養技術の開発および力学解析

抄録

Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are representative cells that respond to force and are important cells that constitute the blood vessel wall and regulate the vessel diameter by relaxation and contraction. VSMCs change their phenotype from contractile to synthetic under pathological conditions. A similar change is observed when VSMCs are isolated from the native tissue and placed in culture conditions. To understand smooth muscle pathophysiology, it is important to understand the mechanism of their phenotypic change. However, previous studies including ours only used cultured synthetic VSMCs on the dishes, which is quite different from VSMCs in vascular tissues in vivo. To overcome this problem, we developed a novel micro-grooved collagen substrate to control cell orientation similar to in vivo vascular tissue, and cultured VSMCs on this substrate to induce their contractile differentiation. Then we investigated the changes in the mechanical properties of VSMCs using an atomic force microscopy, and assessed the changes in the nuclear-cytoskeletal interactions during smooth muscle differentiation.