Smooth Muscle Cell Orientation on Non-Uniform Stretch Environments

Cells of the artery can respond to mechanical cues in a variety of ways including proliferation, migration, protein secretion, phenotype modulation, and orientation [4, 6]. Many of these responses are related to the progression of disease such as atherosclerosis, emphasizing a need to understand how mechanical signals are translated into biological behaviors. Much work has been done to isolate the effects of particular mechanical inputs on particular cellular responses with rather simple mechanical environments, e.g. uniaxial or uniform equibiaxial stretching. Such experiments have greatly improved our knowledge of mechanobiology, yet many questions regarding these cell responses remain unaddressed; in particular, the effect of non-uniform stretch environments.