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Stiffness Of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells From Aged Primates Measured Using Reconstituted Tissue Model, Shilpa Nagendra
Stiffness Of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells From Aged Primates Measured Using Reconstituted Tissue Model, Shilpa Nagendra
Theses
Increased stiffness of the aorta is an important detrimental change that occurs with aging. Most previous research has implicated stiffening of the extracellular collagen matrix with age. The study reported in this thesis focused instead on the potential contribution from stiffening of the vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) with age.
VSMCs previously obtained from young and old monkeys (macaca fascicularis) were seeded into a collagen gel to form a reconstituted tissue. The aim of this study was to quantitatively characterize the mechanical properties of this reconstituted tissue model via uniaxially stretching each ring to defined levels of strain. The total …