Affiliations: [a] Bioengineering, Tissue and Neuroplasticity (BIOTN), Faculté de Médecine, Université Paris-Est Créteil, Créteil, France | [b] Department of Vascular Surgery, Henri Mondor Hospital AP-HP, F-94010 Créteil, France
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Professor Mustapha Zidi, Faculté de Médecine, Université Paris-Est Créteil, EA 7377 BIOTN, 8 rue du Général Sarrail, 94010 Créteil, France. Tel.: +33 1 49 81 35 57; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: BACKGROUND:Cellular treatments using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) cultured in 3D conditions constitute a solution to the classical surgery in treating abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). The recurrent question is: how this type of biotherapy changes the mechanical behavior of artery? METHODS:Experiments measurements based on xenograft rat model showed that the proposed cellular treatment leads to a decreasing radius and length of the AAA during its growth. An inverse finite element method was used to investigate the mechanical hyperelastic behavior of the AAA in the untreated case compared to the treated one. RESULTS:Although AAA leads a loss anisotropy while the cellular treatment does not restore it, it was shown that the stiffness of the arterial wall was improved. The numerical analysis of the stress distributions permitted to localize the stress concentration through the arterial wall and the probable zone of the rupture of the aneurysm developed from the xenograft rat model. CONCLUSIONS:The treatment of AAA with MSCs cultured in a 3D conditions constitutes a new challenge. Based on xenograft rat model, this study shows the potential of this cellular treatment to reduce the variation of the growth, the stiffness and the stress distributions.
Keywords: Abdominal aortic aneurysm, cellular therapy, inverse finite element method, loss of anisotropy
