# Artery-on-a-chip with perivascular adipose tissue for pressure myography

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK · 2020 · $187,856

## Abstract

Vasoconstriction and vasodilation are essential to blood pressure regulation and physiological responses in
health and disease. Vascular contractility can be measured in humans in vivo and in animals ex vivo.
Unfortunately human studies require a skilled technician and have limited ability to vary physiological stimuli,
whereas animal studies are time consuming and may have limited applicability to human vascular function. While
attempts have been made to develop in vitro systems to measure vasoconstriction and vasodilation, these
systems do not include circumferentially aligned primary human vascular smooth muscle cells (vSMC) nor do
they include perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT), which is critical to arterial response to vasoactive stimuli.
 Our long-term goal is to understand how PVAT affects arterial function in health and disease. The goal of
this project is to create an artery-on-a-chip which includes PVAT and enables vasoconstriction and
vasorelaxation measurements in response to both mechanical and biochemical stimuli. As an integral part of the
iterative design process, we will thoroughly verify the in vitro artery-on-a-chip via ex vivo pressure myography of
mouse resistance vessels and through comparisons to human studies. The artery-on-a-chip does not have to
recapitulate all arterial structures (e.g., elastic lamina) or mechanical properties (e.g., burst strength); it only
needs to demonstrate similar vasoconstriction and vasorelaxation trends to native arteries. To support the
creation of the artery-on-a-chip with PVAT, we propose the following aims:
Aim 1: Create an endothelialized tube of circumferentially aligned, contractile vSMCs
 We will use microribbons to circumferentially align vSMC in a cylindrical hydrogel channel and fluid flow to
axially align endothelial cells (EC). We will determine how hydrogel composition and mechanical properties
affects vSMC alignment as well as artery-on-a-chip vasoconstriction and vasodilation.
Aim 2: Incorporate perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) around the engineered vessel
 We will test which PVAT source and incorporation method best recapitulates PVAT effects on
vasoconstriction and vasodilation in healthy and inflamed conditions in the artery-on-a-chip.
Aim 3: Validate artery-on-a-chip with ex vivo pressure myography and in vivo human data
 We will thoroughly validate the artery-on-a-chip with PVAT by comparing it to ex vivo pressure myography
of mouse vessels and in vivo human vasoreactivity data in healthy, inflamed, and obese conditions.
 This research will be the first to create a human artery-on-a-chip with PVAT to test vascular contractility. The
device will have implications in drug testing as well as in elucidating mechanisms through which PVAT affects
vascular function. In addition, the novel biofabrication methods will be applicable to other 3D aligned cell cultures.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9994292
- **Project number:** 5R21EB028466-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
- **Principal Investigator:** Alisa S Morss Clyne
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $187,856
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-08-15 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9994292

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9994292, Artery-on-a-chip with perivascular adipose tissue for pressure myography (5R21EB028466-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9994292. Licensed CC0.

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