Engineering Blood Vessels Using Shape-Morphing Scaffolds

Researchers have developed a shape-morphing scaffold that can be used to create three-dimensional blood vessel grafts.

AsianScientist (Jun. 12, 2018) – Scientists in China have developed a shape-morphing scaffold that can be used to create small-diameter vascular grafts. They published their findings in Advanced Functional Materials.

Cardiovascular disease is now the number one cause of death globally according to the World Health Organization, with more than 17.5 million patients dying from it every year. Coronary artery bypass grafting is one of most effective approaches for treating severe cardiovascular disease. However, patients undergoing the procedure still face the high risks of transplantation surgery and potential complications caused by compliance mismatch.

In recent years, tissue engineering has emerged as a source of functional vascular analogs for treating cardiovascular disease. Nevertheless, it is challenging to grow three-dimensional (3D) endothelial blood vessels for tissue-engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs).

In this study, a research team led by Dr. Du Xuemin at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences designed a shape-morphing scaffold that can be used to facilitate the growth of endothelial vessels in small-diameter vascular grafts.

The scaffold consists of two layers: a shape-memory polymer and an electrospun membrane. At the physiological temperature of 37°C, the scaffold deforms from a 2D planar shape to a well-defined 3D tubular shape, allowing endothelial cells seeded homogeneously on the electrospun membrane while in the planar shape to grow into a vascular-like, 3D structure.

The research not only offers a new method for creating TEVGs, but also offers a potential in vitro endothelium model for the screening of cardiovascular drugs, the researchers said.

“We hope that the universal strategy developed in this study, combining smart materials and conventional tissue engineering scaffolds, can be extended to engineering complex cell-scaffold constructs mimicking the complicated anatomy of various tissues and organs through on-demand programmed deformation,” said Du.



The article can be found at: Zhao et al. (2018) Programmed Shape‐Morphing Scaffolds Enabling Facile 3D Endothelialization.

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Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Photo: Shutterstock.
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