A Method to Quantify Tensile Biaxial Properties of Mouse Aortic Valve Leaflets.

Understanding aortic valve (AV) mechanics is crucial in elucidating both the mechanisms that drive the manifestation of valvular diseases as well as the development of treatment modalities that target these processes. Genetically modified mouse models have become the gold standard in assessing biological mechanistic influences of AV development and disease. However, very little is known about mouse aortic valve leaflet (MAVL) tensile properties due to their microscopic size (∼500 μm long and 45 μm thick) and the lack of proper mechanical testing modalities to assess uniaxial and biaxial tensile properties of the tissue.