Advances in vascular tissue engineering / 医用生物力学

Cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis remain the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the world. The replacement of large diameter vessels (≥6 mm), such as the aorta, has been performed successfully with synthetic non-degradable vascular grafts, while it is still a challenge to engineer small diameter vessels with long-term patency. Over the past three decades, the rapid progress in the field of vascular tissue engineering has provided some promising approaches, including in vitro, in vivo, and in situ tissue engineering of vascular grafts. This review is focused on the most recent progress and trends in vascular tissue engineering.

A new vascular tissue engineering material:Electrospun small-diameter nanofibous scaffolds / 中国组织工程研究

BACKGROUND:Due to the much higher requirement of biocompatibility and anticoagulant of smal-diameter vascular grafts than those of large-diameter ones, in situ blood vessel regeneration occurs as a new research direction. OBJECTIVE:To summarize the recent research development of electrospun smal-diameter scaffolds and to explore the application of in situ blood vessel regeneration and the development tendency. METHODS:The first author retrieved China National Knowledge Infrastructure database, Wanfang data and ISI Web of Knowledge foreign database to retrieve literatures addressing the fabrication of electrospun smal-diameter nanofibrous vascular grafts, surface modification and mimicking extracel ular matrix, as wel as the evaluation of biocompatibility and security after grafting. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Electrospun smal-diameter nanofibrous vascular grafts have emerged as promising candidates in vascular tissue engineering. By using both natural and synthetic polymers, the scaffolds can achieve a good balance between mechanical property and biocompatibility. Meanwhile, the fabrication of multi-layered vascular scaffolds, functional surface modification and mimicking extracel ular matrix structural y and functional y are now becoming attractive research directions. However, at current stage, electrospun vascular scaffolds used clinical y are basical y formed by synthetic materials, which have limited biocompatibility and anticoagulant activity. In this case, more efforts should be paid to find an optimal ratio between natural and synthetic materials for the improvement of biocompatibility and anticoagulant ability of smal-diameter vascular grafts.