Models of vessel calcification

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Complete occlusion of the vasculature by mineralised plaques is extremely difficult to treat and prevents the**use of stents that are routinely used to restore flow to narrowed vessels. The partner of this Engage proposal**has a revolutionary CE marked shockwave technology that can safely pierce the calcified obstruction enabling**traditional stenting. This technology then can erradicate the need for some coronary and peripheral bypasses**thereby vastly improving quality of life for many patients with criovascular disease.**In order to work on second and third generation products, having a model of calcified vessels will be of great**value since currently only diseased human tissues and some animal vessels from models of diseases are**available. Clearly there are practical issues surrounding the use of donor human tissues and animal models of**atherosclerosis require considerable time to develop.**The PI is familiar with several techniqes to induce rapid mineralisaton is a variety of natural and synthetic**polymers and will identify routes to rapidly mineralizing femoral arteries harvested from already dead animals**to produce mimics of the human diseased condition. This will afford Soundbite Medical a tool to screen**various configurations of their hardware, thereby accelerating devlopment of better tools for these patients.