Speaker
Description
Peripheral artery disease is the third leading cause for morbidity worldwide, demanding a multimodal therapy for more than 200 million people. Current therapeutic options for more severe cases range from medication therapy to surgical interventions. Synthetic vascular bypass grafts are the current gold standard in the surgical treatment of patients with no suitable autologous graft available. These scaffolds are predisposed to the development and progression of deep wound/graft infection, requiring surgical removal of the implanted bypass. In such cases biological grafts are needed to restore blood flow and successfully confine and treat infection. Here we present non-immunogenic humanized vascular grafts derived from Muscari neglectum (grape hyacinth) stem extracellular matrices employing decellularization. These naturally derived scaffolds retain the mechanobiological characteristics of their native counterparts for successful reimplantation and regeneration of isolated human cells. Morphological integrity and biophysical characteristics were assessed in four biological replicates by visualization and magnetic resonance elastography. In all biological replicates a significant reduction of DNA content and cellular material was observed. In this study, we present biohybrid living vascular grafts by reendothelialization of Muscari neglectum stem extracellular matrix scaffolds with human umbilical vein endothelial cells under dynamic perfusion conditions. By introducing a rice-based hydrogel coating to the fabricated scaffolds, the here presented grafts show adequate hemocompatibility with no hemolytic activity and low thrombogenicity. To further augment fabricated grafts for adequate strength, all coated scaffolds were reseeded with human smooth muscle cells and assessed by their flow dynamics employing ultrasound imaging. In a proof-of-concept experiment, we created a surgical anastomosis using these grafts showing adequate perfusability and sturdiness under pulsatile flow conditions. These biologically derived scaffolds pose as sustainable and cost-effective hybrid living scaffolds, that can be fabricated at large scale for clinical applications, overcoming current limitations in vascular surgery.
64057828707