Vascular endothelial cells experience a wide range of mechanical stimuli in vivo, including dynamic stretching and time-varying shear stress due to pulsatile blood flow. Under physiologic conditions, these hemodynamic forces constitute an important component of the cells' environment and are necessary for the normal maintenance of the structure and function of the vessel wall. Implantation of artificial vascular graft materials can significantly alter the mechanical environment of the cell. Furthermore, an important design criterion for engineered tissue constructs is the production of a mechanical environment that, ideally, stimulates normal growth and structural adaptation and. At least, avoids extremes in mechanical loading that might cause cellular trauma. In this paper, we investigate the mechanical loading conditions associated with normal and pathological mechanotransduction and cellular injury with an emphasis on the loading rate dependence of the cellular responses.

A custom designed cone-and-plate device] allows arbitrary cone velocity waveforms to be generated.