ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Autologous vessels remain the gold standard for vascular grafts in microanastomoses. However, they are sometimes unavailable and have a limited long-term patency. Synthetic vessels have high success rates in large-diameter reconstructions but failed when used as small-diameter grafts due to graft occlusion. It has been proven that endothelial cell seeding improves prosthesis performance and long-term patency. Among polyurethane, PET and ePTFE, polyurethane has the best affinity to endothelial cells and mechanical properties closest to human vessels. We examined the ability of endothelial cells to attach to a polyurethane graft manufactured by the electrospinning method. METHODS: Endothelial cells, which were cultured from porcine internal jugular veins, were attached to polyurethane grafts with an internal diameter of 3mm. The same cells were attached to allogeneic decellularized porcine internal carotid artery grafts as controls. Both of the 10mm-long grafts were exposed to endothelial cells in a well for 1 hour. Each well contained 2x10(5) endothelial cells. The graft materials were rotated through 90 degrees every 15 minutes in order to minimize the effect of gravity. The extent of cell attachment was examined with the MTT assay. RESULTS: The MTT assay showed good incorporation of endothelial cells into both grafts. For the evaluation of affinity, the number of attached cells was counted at 10 fields of microscopic examination with x40 magnification. Endothelial cells adhered more to polyurethane grafts (mean, 127.4+/-6.2 cells) compared to porcine artery grafts (mean 45.8+/-5.1 cells)(p<0.05,Mann-Whitney test). CONCLUSION: In this study, we attached porcine endothelial cells to polyurethane grafts, manufactured by electrospinning. The grafts exhibited a better affinity to endothelial cells than allogeneic decellularized porcine internal carotid artery grafts. It is suggested that the time required for endothelial cells to attach to decellulized artery grafts may be longer than that which is required for attachment to polyurethane rafts.