Conditioned medium produced by fibroblasts cultured in low oxygen pressure allows the formation of highly structured capillary-like networks in fibrin gels

Abstract

Tissue engineering is an emerging and promising concept to replace or cure failing organs, but its clinical translation currently encounters issues due to the inability to quickly produce inexpensive thick tissues, which are necessary for many applications. To circumvent this problem, we postulate that cells secrete the optimal cocktail required to promote angiogenesis when they are placed in physiological conditions where their oxygen supply is reduced. Thus, dermal fibroblasts were cultivated under hypoxia (2% O2) to condition their cell culture medium. The potential of this conditioned medium was tested for human umbilical vein endothelial cell proliferation and for their ability to form capillary-like networks into fibrin gels. The medium conditioned by dermal fibroblasts under hypoxic conditions (DF-Hx) induced a more significant proliferation of endothelial cells compared to medium conditioned by dermal fibroblasts under normoxic conditions (DF-Nx). In essence, doubling time for endothelial cells in DF-Hx was reduced by 10.4% compared to DF-Nx after 1 week of conditioning, and by 20.3% after 2 weeks. The DF-Hx allowed the formation of more extended and more structured capillary-like networks than DF-Nx or commercially available medium, paving the way to further refinements.