Microstructure and Mechanical Property of Glutaraldehyde-Treated Porcine Pulmonary Ligament

There is a significant need for fixed biological tissues with desired structural and material constituents for tissue engineering applications. Here, we introduce the lung ligament as a fixed biological material that may have clinical utility for tissue engineering. To characterize the lung tissue for potential clinical applications, we studied glutaraldehyde-treated porcine pulmonary ligament (n = 11) with multiphoton microscopy (MPM) and conducted biaxial planar experiments to characterize the mechanical property of the tissue. The MPM imaging revealed that there are generally two families of collagen fibers distributed in two distinct layers: The first family largely aligns along the longitudinal direction with a mean angle of θ = 10.7 ± 9.3 deg, while the second one exhibits a random distribution with a mean θ = 36.6 ± 27.4. Elastin fibers appear in some intermediate sublayers with a random orientation distribution with a mean θ = 39.6 ± 23 deg. Based on the microstructural observation, a microstructure-based constitutive law was proposed to model the elastic property of the tissue. The material parameters were identified by fitting the model to the biaxial stress–strain data of specimens, and good fitting quality was achieved. The parameter e0 (which denotes the strain beyond which the collagen can withstand tension) of glutaraldehyde-treated tissues demonstrated low variability implying a relatively consistent collagen undulation in different samples, while the stiffness parameters for elastin and collagen fibers showed relatively greater variability. The fixed tissues presented a smaller e0 than that of fresh specimen, confirming that glutaraldehyde crosslinking increases the mechanical strength of collagen-based biomaterials. The present study sheds light on the biomechanics of glutaraldehyde-treated porcine pulmonary ligament that may be a candidate for tissue engineering.