Sharif Digital Repository

Endothelial cells that cover the inner wall of blood cells and are sensitive to receiving mechanical signals play important role in regulating many vital activities of the human body especially the function of the cardiovascular system. One of the factors affecting the mechanical functions of these cells is the shear stress applied to them. Due to blood velocity increasing or decreasing the endothelial cells shear stress change and leads to some chemical reactions and finally releasing biochemical substances including Nitrogen-Monoxide and Calcium-ion. Nitrogen-Monoxide produced by endothelial cells by affecting the smooth muscle cells in the vessel wall causes dilating of the vessel wall,... 

for decades Cancer has been one of the major causes of death universally. Though extensive efforts in developing new anticancer therapies, they face failures in clinical trials and curing the sick owing to time consuming and expensive preclinical models with poor predictions of drug responses in human. To address this challenge it is crucial to develop preclinical models mimicking the main aspects of a tumor that can provide effective prediction of therapeutic responses. Tumor on chip technology has appeared as a promising approach for providing effective cancer models and reliable preclinical predictions. In this project, collagen was first extracted as the main constituent of the tumor... 

Atherosclerosis in coronary arteries is one of the most important topics due to its high prevalence and the importance of these arteries for supplying blood to the heart. The morphology of endothelial cells (ECs) is an independent index for determining the atheroprone sites. The ECs show a regular elongated and aligned configuration to the blood flow, at the atheroprotected regions; on the other hand, at the atheroprone regions, the cells have a polygonal, randomly oriented morphology. The thesis intended to propose a method for coronary artery simulation, which is able to determine the atheroprone sites regarding the ECs morphology. In addition, the attempts were made to investigate the... 

Endothelium is the interior layer of an artery made up of tremendous number of endothelial cells which are located side by side. Finding the effective parameters that cause the cells to obtain mechanical strength in different morphologies is a major effort in cell engineering studies. In this work a numerical model for endothelial cells is developed. This model has included cell's plasma membrane (the outer membrane of the cell), nucleus and cytoskeleton main components including intermediate and actin filaments as well as microtubules. The model has been validated by simulating the adhesion of the cells to a flat substrate and also atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments. The two most... 

Endothelial derived nitric oxide (NO) and its role in regulating the physiological conditions of blood vessels is one of the favorite topics among researchers. The majority of previous studies have focused on nitric oxide transport in blood vessels, less attention has been paid to its vasodilative effects in blood vessels. The main aim of this study is to propose an integrated model to study the effects of endothelial-derived nitric oxide on hemodynamic conditions of blood vessels. Nitric oxide is produced by endothelial cells upon exposure to mechanical forces such as hemodynamic shear stress. The synthesized nitric oxide then diffuses into the neighboring vascular smooth cells, where it... 

Cell migration plays a key role in many biological processes including metastasis, wound healing, inflammatory response, body immune response and formation of new blood vessels. The migration of cells in response to the gradient of concentration gradient is regarded as chemotaxis. In the present study, the group chemotaxis of endothelial cells is simulated in response to gradient concentration of biochemical species using a developed cell migration model. At the first step, the numerical simulation of fluid flow and concentration transport of biochemical species is performed using a developed FVM code. At the second part, a model is developed to mimic the group migration of endothelial... 

Investigation of the behavior of living cells in different biological conditions could play a key role in exploring the main reasons of humans' disorders and diseases. In this regard, many researchers are studying different subjects related to the living cells. Although most of these research activities are based on experimental methods, numerical approach could be utilized to investigate some topics which cannot be studied by experimental methods.In this study a three dimensional model of endothelial cell is proposed for the investigation of cell performance during compression test. The model consists of cell membrane, nucleus and main components of cytoskeleton, namely actin filaments,... 

Morphology and alignment of endothelial cells (ECs) have great influence on plaque formation. These alignments are based on the cyclic strains and wall shear stress (WSS) on the arterial wall. In the present study, cyclic strains and WSS are investigated to predict the secondary plaque locations downstream of the primary stenosis. Therefore, left coronary artery (LCA) with its branches to left anterior descending (LAD) and left circumflex (LCX) are 3D located on a virtual sphere to consider the cardiac motion. Stenoses are placed at the beginning of the bifurcation with varying degrees from 40% to 70% based on diameter reduction. Healthy coronary is also constructed to compare with those of...