Skeletal Muscle Regeneration on Protein-Grafted and Microchannel-Patterned Scaffold for Hypopharyngeal Tissue Engineering

Zhisen Shen,Qun Li,Kunjie Xu,Cheng Kang,Dong Ye,Dakai Lu,Jingjing Lv,Jingjing Chen,Yabin Zhu,Shejie Qiu,Shanshan Guo

doi:10.1155/2013/146953

Abstract

In the field of tissue engineering, polymeric materials with high biocompatibility like polylactic acid and polyglycolic acid have been widely used for fabricating living constructs. For hypopharynx tissue engineering, skeletal muscle is one important functional part of the whole organ, which assembles the unidirectionally aligned myotubes. In this study, a polyurethane (PU) scaffold with microchannel patterns was used to provide aligning guidance for the seeded human myoblasts. Due to the low hydrophilicity of PU, the scaffold was grafted with silk fibroin (PU-SF) or gelatin (PU-Gel) to improve its cell adhesion properties. Scaffolds were observed to degrade slowly over time, and their mechanical properties and hydrophilicities were improved through the surface grafting. Also, the myoblasts seeded on PU-SF had the higher proliferative rate and better differentiation compared with those on the control or PU-Gel. Our results demonstrate that polyurethane scaffolds seeded with myoblasts hold promise to guide hypopharynx muscle regeneration.

Highlights

Hypopharynx carcinoma is one of the common head and neck cancers; approximately 2500 new cases are diagnosed in the United States each year with the peak incidence in males and females aged 50 to 60 years [1, 2]
For the severe and large area hypopharynx defects, visceral or myocutaneous flaps, such as an ileocolic flap, a radial forearm flap, and an anterolateral thigh flap, a submental island flap, and an infrahyoid myocutaneous flap, are common methods used for surgical repair [4,5,6,7,8]
The scaffolds were found to degrade slowly over time, and muscle healing was improved as shown by an increased quantity of innervated and vascularized muscle fibers. These results suggest that 3D muscle grafts created in vitro from collagen composite scaffolds seeded with myoblasts can be used for defect muscle tissue repair in vivo [13]

Summary

Introduction

Hypopharynx carcinoma is one of the common head and neck cancers; approximately 2500 new cases are diagnosed in the United States each year with the peak incidence in males and females aged 50 to 60 years [1, 2]. For the severe and large area hypopharynx defects, visceral or myocutaneous flaps, such as an ileocolic flap, a radial forearm flap, and an anterolateral thigh flap, a submental island flap, and an infrahyoid myocutaneous flap, are common methods used for surgical repair [4,5,6,7,8]. These grafts cannot fully restore the function of hypopharynx tissue, in particular the reconstruction of the complex structures surrounding the larynx and hypopharynx, while postoperative dyspnea may be inevitable when hypopharynx pharyngeal constrictors were sectioned [9, 10]

Methods

Results

Conclusion