She participated very actively in the process of developing these guidelines, in particular the important chapters on chronic arterial and venous mesenteric ischaemia. Six days after the second meeting of the task force she died unexpectedly, to our great despair and loss. We honour her dedication and scientific integrity by completing these guidelines. Among many other commitments she was a very productive reviewer and an associate editor of this journal. You can read more about Paola's important contributions to science and to the vascular community in the April 2016 issue of the European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery. 1

Tissue engineering offers the opportunity to develop vascular scaffolds that mimic the morphology of natural arteries. We have developed a porous three-dimensional scaffold consisting of fibres of collagen and elastin interspersed together. Scaffolds were obtained by freeze-drying a suspension of insoluble type I collagen and insoluble elastin. In order to improve the stability of the obtained matrices, they were cross-linked by two different methods. A water-soluble carbodi-imide, alone or in combination with a diamine, was used for this purpose: zero- or non-zero-length cross-links were obtained. The occurrence of cross-linking was verified by monitoring the thermal behaviour and the free-amino-group contents of the scaffolds before and after cross-linking. Smooth-muscle cells (SMCs) were cultured for different periods of time and their ability to grow and proliferate was investigated. SMCs were isolated from human umbilical and saphenous veins, and the purity of the cultures obtained was verified by staining with a specific monoclonal antibody (mAb). Cultured cells were also identified by mAbs against muscle actin and vimentin. After 14 days, a confluent layer of SMCs was obtained on non-cross-linked scaffolds. As for the cross-linked samples, no differences in cell attachment and proliferation were observed between scaffolds cross-linked using the two different methods. Cells cultured on the scaffolds were identified with an anti-(alpha-smooth-muscle actin) mAb. The orientation of SMCs resembled that of the fibres of collagen and elastin. In this way, it may be possible to develop tubular porous scaffolds resembling the morphological characteristics of native blood vessels.

No abstract

No abstract