Chitosan/hyaluronic acid multilayer films are biocompatible substrate for Wharton's jelly derived stem cells.

Background: Discovery of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in various adult human tissues opened the way to new therapeutic strategies involving tissue engineering from these cells. More recently, vascular substitutes have opened the era of vascular engineering by making replacement vessels from purely biological material. The objective of our study was to create a vascular substitute from MSCs using a multilayer polyelectrolyte film based on natural polymers (Chitosan and Hyaluronic Acid).

Methods: Biocompatibility and cellular behavior were evaluated in this study using MSCs from the Wharton's jelly (WJ) of human umbilical cords. WJ-MSCs adherence was assessed and cells morphology was investigated by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and actin visualization (Phalloidin).

Results: The number of WJ-MSCs seeded on the (CHI/HA)10 films was greater than the number of cells seeded on the collagen, as the spectrophotometric measurement showed a large cell proliferation on (CHI/HA)10 in comparison with collagen. After adhesion, WJ-MSCs showed a fibroblastic morphology on CHI/HA as for control (collagen I). These results were confirmed by cytoskeleton staining.

Conclusions: The biocompatibility of WJ-MSCs and (CHI/HA)10 showed the possibility to combine the use of WJ-MSCs and (CHI/HA)10 films in vascular tissue engineering.