剪切流动下内皮细胞变形的模拟

血液流动和内皮的耦合是重要的生物医学问题 ,引起了学者们的广泛的兴趣。目前已知内皮细胞能感知流场的剪切应力而改变其形态和功能。由于剪切应力被认为是引起内皮细胞重建的始发信号 ,所以了解内皮细胞与流动应力之间的相互作用机制是十分重要的。我们建立了一个理论模型来模拟内皮细胞与流场应力之间的相互作用。根据二维计算流体动力学方法研究了内皮细胞应力、压力的分布以及内皮细胞在剪切应力作用下的变形情况。结果表明 :( 1)内皮细胞的变形随 α(对应于流体作用于细胞表面的切应力 )的变化而变化。当 α>0 .0 2 1时 ,细胞的变形随 α的增大而显著增大 ;( 2 )流动引起了细胞表面应力和压力分布的不均匀 ,从而导致了细胞的变形。但内皮细胞的最大应力总是位于细胞的顶点。同时 ,我们用流室系统提供剪切流动 ,测量了不同剪切应力作用下培养的人主动脉内皮细胞的变形。所得到的实验结果与上述数值模拟结果是吻合的。本文结果提示 ,由于剪切流动引起细胞表面应力和压力分布的不均一 ,可能在细胞激活和细胞功能的调节 (如细胞骨架的调节 ,粘附分子的表达与分布等 )机制上具有特殊的作用。本研究为综合应用动力学方程来建立内皮细胞模型提供了工作框架

Simulation of the Deformation of the Endothelial Cell Under a Shear Flow

The coupling between the endothelium and blood flow is an important biomedical problem and has drawn extensive research. Endothelial cells are known to adapt their shapes and functions in response to applied shear flow. Shear Stress being regarded as a primary triggering signal for cellular remodeling, it is important to understand the interaction mechanism between applied shear flow and endothelial cells. In present study we have established a theoretical model to simulate the coupling between the deformation of an endothelial cell and applied shear flow. A two dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) is conducted to determine the local distributions of mechanical stress and pressure on cell surface. Our results show that: (1) the deformation of endothelial cell changes with alpha (corresponding to the shear stress imposed on cell surface by flow fluid). When alpha is greater than 0.021, the cell deformability increases greatly; (2) the distributions of stress and pressure on cell surface are not uniform, but the maximal shear stress and displacement are always at the top point of the cell. Meanwhile, we have measured the deformation of cultured human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs) exposed to shear flow by using a flow chamber. We found that the numerical results are well consistent with those of experiment. These results suggest that the non-uniformity distributions of mechanical stress and pressure on cell surface may play a particular role in the mechanism of cell activation and in the regulation of endothelial cells functions (modification of cytoskeleton, distributions of adhesion molecules, etc.). The present study offers a framework to facilitate the development of a comprehensive dynamic model for endothelial cells.