On the biomechanics and mechanobiology of growing skin

JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY

卷:297

Article

Zoellner, Alexander M.¹  Tepole, Adrian Buganza¹  Kuhl, Ellen^1,2,3,4 

[1] Stanford Univ, Dept Mech Engn, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

[2] ETH, Dept Mech & Proc Engn, Ctr Mech, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland

[3] Stanford Univ, Dept Bioengn, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

[4] Stanford Univ, Dept Cardiothorac Surg, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

关键词: Skin;    Biological membranes;    Mechanotransduction;    Growth;    Tissue expansion;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.12.022

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Skin displays an impressive functional plasticity, which allows it to adapt gradually to environmental changes. Tissue expansion takes advantage of this adaptation, and induces a controlled in situ skin growth for defect correction in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Stretches beyond the skin's physiological limit invoke several mechanotransduction pathways, which increase mitotic activity and collagen synthesis, ultimately resulting in a net gain in skin surface area. However, the interplay between mechanics and biology during tissue expansion remains unquantified. Here, we present a continuum model for skin growth that summarizes the underlying mechanotransduction pathways collectively in a single phenomenological variable, the strain-driven area growth. We illustrate the governing equations for growing biological membranes, and demonstrate their computational solution within a nonlinear finite element setting. In displacement-controlled equi-biaxial extension tests, the model accurately predicts the experimentally observed histological, mechanical, and structural features of growing skin, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Acute and chronic elastic uniaxial stretches are 25% and 10%, compared to 36% and 10% reported in the literature. Acute and chronic thickness changes are -28% and -12%, compared to -22% and -7% reported in the literature. Chronic fractional weight gain is 3.3, compared to 2.7 for wet weight and 3.3 for dry weight reported in the literature. In two clinical cases of skin expansion in pediatric forehead reconstruction, the model captures the clinically observed mechanical and structural responses, both acutely and chronically. Our results demonstrate that the field theories of continuum mechanics can reliably predict the mechanical manipulation of thin biological membranes by controlling their mechanotransduction pathways through mechanical overstretch. We anticipate that the proposed skin growth model can be generalized to arbitrary biological membranes, and that it can serve as a valuable tool to virtually manipulate living tissues, simply by means of changes in the mechanical environment. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free