Investigation of effective shear stress on endothelial differentiation of human adipose-derived stem cells with microfluidic screening device

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can differentiate into not only mesenchymal lineage cells, such as osteoblasts, adipocytes and chondrocytes, but also into endothelial cells in vitro when they are exposed to specific biochemical factors. A shear stress stimulus combined with biochemical factors has been reported to promote endothelial cell differentiation of MSCs more effectively than the case with biochemicals only. Although many previous studies suggested that the specific shear stress levels can increase the differentiation potentials of MSCs into endothelial cells, no studies have investigated the effects of shear stress levels within a physiological range on the endothelial differentiation at once. In this paper, we utilized a microfluidic screening device with an equilateral triangular channel, which generates a shear stress gradient in the physiological range of 0-19.8 dyne/cm(2) across the channel, to examine shear stress effects on endothelial differentiation of MSCs. Human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs) were differentiated into endothelial cells by applying the shear stress gradient with an endothelial induction medium to find out an effective shear stress range on endothelial differentiation. As a result, a shear stress range of 7.8-13.7 dyne/cm(2) was found to be the most effective level of shear stress stimulus for the endothelial differentiation of hASCs. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.