Electrospun PET-PU scaffolds for vascular tissue engineering

Abstract

The incidence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is projected to continuously increase in the coming decades, with a colossal associated cost of treatment. In the US alone, 83.6 million people are estimated to have one or several types of CVDs, with almost half of the patients being older than 60 years of age. Many of these cases require arterial prosthesis. However, current treatments using both natural and synthetic grafts still have severe shortcomings. Tissue engineering carries great potential to overcome these shortcomings. Yet, despite significant advances in tissue engineering, in the recent years, tissue-engineered vascular grafts with native blood vessels like properties and behavior have remained elusive. For widespread clinical application of tissue-engineered grafts, they must be able to withstand the forces associated with blood flow, they must be biocompatible, and they must maintain long-term patency to prevent occlusions. In our current work, we propose the use of composite PET:PU scaffolds for the development of synthetic vascular grafts. For this purpose, electrospun PET:PU scaffolds of different blending ratios have been fabricated and their mechanical properties studied. The scaffold with the properties that best promise to suit the purpose of vascular tissue engineering has then been seeded with cells and the proliferation, and viability of these cells have been investigated. The investigation of the growth of vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells and incorporation of these cells into the PET:PU scaffolds for development of implantable vascular grafts is one of the future directions for the current work.