Vascular Tissue Engineering: Recent Advances in Small Diameter Blood Vessel Regeneration

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality around the globe. The development of a functional and appropriate substitute for small diameter blood vessel replacement is still a challenge to overcome the main drawbacks of autografts and the inadequate performances of synthetic prostheses made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET, Dacron) and expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE, Goretex). Therefore, vascular tissue engineering has become a promising approach for small diameter blood vessel regeneration as demonstrated by the increasing interest dedicated to this field. This review is focused on the most relevant and recent studies concerning vascular tissue engineering for small diameter blood vessel applications. Specifically, the present work reviews research on the development of tissue-engineered vascular grafts made of decellularized matrices and natural and/or biodegradable synthetic polymers and their realization without scaffold.

Quantifying Cell Adhesion through Impingement of a Controlled Microjet

“…Typically, cell delamination is observed after a period of time, because of the shear stress exerted by the blood stream. As a consequence, engineering of vascular implants with diameters below 6 mm remains challenging, although of key importance for treatment of cardiovascular diseases (41,42). Because the herein proposed approach allows testing a wide range of shear stress conditions in one single experiment, it would help optimizing surface properties for cell adhesion, and eventually decrease the diameter of the synthetic implants.…”

Small diameter electrospun silk fibroin vascular grafts: Mechanical properties, in vitro biodegradability, and in vivo biocompatibility

“…Although synthetic polymeric materials (i.e. Dacron®, Goretex®) have been successfully used for large and medium diameter vessels (ID ≥ 6 mm), they fail at smaller diameters (ID b 6 mm), due to thrombosis, anastomotic intimal hyperplasia, aneurysm formation, infection, and compliance mismatches [1][2][3]. To date, autologous vessels (e.g.…”

Manufacturing of Biodegradable Scaffolds to Engineer Artificial Blood Vessel

“…Poly(ε)-caprolactone (PCL) is wide used biopolymer in many studies (24). PCL is semicrystalline, aliphatic polyester synthesized by the ring-opening polymerization of ε-caprolactone (25,26,27).…”