(230au) Early Atherogenesis: How Blood-Pressure-Driven Flow and Membrane Proteins Influence Artery Wall Mechanics and Mass Transfer Across the Artery Wall
AIChE Annual Meeting
2016
2016 AIChE Annual Meeting
Engineering Sciences and Fundamentals
Poster Session: Fluid Mechanics (Area 1J)
Monday, November 14, 2016 - 3:15pm to 5:45pm
We have earlier shown that bovine and rat aortic endothelial cells (ECs) express the membrane water channel protein, aquaporin-1 (AQP1) and that up/down-regulating the number of EC AQP1s increases/decreases the transmural water flow at fixed DP, i.e., increases/decreases the ratio, the hydraulic conductivity, Lp, of flux to DP. Thus a portion of the transmural water flow goes through the cells, in parallel with the portion that goes between them. Further we have shown earlier that at fixed EC AQP1 expression, Lp vs DP is flat at low DP, drops over a narrow DP window and then remains flat to high DP, but the position of this window depends on DEC AQP1 expression. We have shown that this Lp-dependence at fixed EC AQP1 is due to compression of the SI region of the vessel wall, which blocks certain fluid transport pathways into deeper regions of the wall. Here we present a hydrodynamic theory to explain the EC AQP! dependence of the position of the transition window and how to shift this window. Time permitting, we shall show how using this flow field and the hgihg AQP1 selectivity for pure water transport in an advective-diffusion theory for small solute, e.g., albumin, transport yields a measurable oncotic effect. The theory shows how measured Lp values include mass transfer effects, how one can extract intrinsic Lp values from these measurements and a strategy to potentially slow pre-lesion lipid entrainment in the artery wall.