Investigations into vascular cell mobility under normoxic and hypoxic conditions

Objectives: An aim of tissue engineering is the development of surfaces that allow the manipulation of cell movement thereon and thus the control of tissue ingrowth. In many situations where scaffolds are implanted, the environment will initially be hypoxic. We have therefore designed an experimental set up that allows the quantification of cell migration on defined surfaces under hypoxic conditions. As an initial trial we have examined the mobility of the three major vascular cell types, endothelial cells, fibroblasts (FB) and smooth muscle cells (SMC) on fibronectin in normoxia and hypoxia.