Tissue engineered blood vessels

在全球范围内，心血管疾病是头号死亡原因。通过外科手术介入的治疗是常见的，并且非常需要用于旁路手术和血管通路导管的创建的合适的血管。目前，利用自体静脉或动脉代表了血管移植的黄金标准。然而，这些血管的可用性有限，可能质量差，并且它们的提取导致供体部位发病。合成血管移植物也是可用的，由诸如聚四氟乙烯（PTFE）的材料构成。尽管这些移植物在大直径和中等直径血管中表现出令人满意的性能，但在小直径血管中的应用仍不如自体移植物。组织工程化血管（TEBV）可以在体外生长用于作为旁路移植物、血管置换物或血管通路导管植入。这些血管可以提供优于合成移植物的上级性能，并且可以在不需要侵入性自体移植物收获的情况下获得。著名的研究小组已经在生产TEBV方面取得了很大进展，其中一些产品目前正在进行临床试验[6]。然而，这些技术仅提供生成均匀管状血管的能力，并且由于其基于片材的制造工艺，它们将非常难以适应于生产更复杂的形状。该项目的目标将超越组织工程血管的当前最新技术水平，以制造复杂几何形状（例如锥形、分叉或瓣膜）的柔性多孔生物降解材料。

Globally, cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death. Treatment by surgical intervention is commonplace and there is a great need for suitable blood vessels for use in bypass surgery and the creation of vascular access conduits. Currently, utilising autologous veins or arteries represents the gold standard for vascular grafting. However, these vessels are of limited availability, may be of poor quality and their extraction causes donor site morbidity. Synthetic vascular grafts are also available, constructed from materials such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Although these grafts have shown satisfactory performance as large and medium diameter vessels, they remain inferior to autografts for small diameter applications.Tissue engineering offers a potential alternative to autologous vessels or synthetic vascular grafts. Tissue engineered blood vessels (TEBVs) may be grown in vitro for implantation as bypass grafts, vessel replacements or vascular access conduits. These vessels could offer superior performance to synthetic grafts and could be obtained without the need for invasive autograft harvest. Prominent research groups have made great strides towards producing TEBVs with some products currently undergoing clinical trials [6]. However, these technologies only offer the ability to generate uniform tubular blood vessels and they would be very difficult to adapt to producing more complex shapes due to their sheet-based manufacturing process. This project will aim beyond the current state-of-the-art in tissue engineered blood vessels to manufacture flexible, porous biodegradable materials in complex geometries (e.g. tapers, bifurcations or valves).