Fabrication and Evaluation of Poly(glycerol sebacate) based small diameter vascular graft as a potent substitution for autologous vessels

心血管疾病被认为是全球死亡率的主要原因。它们起源于血管狭窄或阻塞。血流减少可能会破坏血液循环性能，导致心肌梗死、动脉疾病和血栓形成以及组织损伤。从药物到血管成形术、支架植入或自体动脉或静脉移植，已经应用了许多治疗策略。通常采用血管旁路移植术，但是通常缺乏合适的、质量良好的脉管系统来用作自体移植物。因此，扩大合成聚合物接枝研究的重要性是无可辩驳的。由聚四氟乙烯（PTFE，Teflon）和聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯（PET，Dacron）制成的商业合成大直径产品已经上市，但不是小直径移植物的合适候选物。由于它们的顺应性和弹性不适当，它们容易发生内膜增生。因此，在过去的几年里，研究集中在小直径血管组织的工程上。该项目的目的是设计和制造一种具有成本效益和现成的小直径血管移植物，以潜在地模仿天然血管。聚癸二酸甘油酯（PGS）具有良好的力学性能、弹性、生物相容性、生物降解性、血液相容性、价格低廉、透明性等优点，是小直径血管组织工程的理想材料。该项目假设更持久的PGS衍生物可以支持平滑肌细胞，并且添加一些基团如甲基丙烯酸酯和聚碳酸酯多元醇可以控制机械强度和生物降解性。此外，用纳米填料如多面体低聚倍半硅氧烷（POSS）对PGS进行改性，不仅可以对增加弹性产生积极影响，还可以通过其抗蛋白质和抗血小板吸附特性对血液相容性产生积极影响。

Cardiovascular diseases are recognized as the main cause of mortality rate globally. They originate from narrowing or blockage of blood vessels. Decreasing blood flow could disrupt blood circulation performance and cause myocardial infarction, arterial disease and thrombosis, and tissue damage. Many therapeutic strategies have been applied from medications to angioplasty, stent insertion, or grafting autologous arteries or veins. Vascular bypass grafting is often employed, however is often a lack of suitable, good quality vasculature to sue as an autologous graft. Consequently, the importance of widening research in synthetic polymeric grafts is irrefutable. Commercial synthetic large-diameter products fabricated from polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, Teflon) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET, Dacron), are already on the market, but are not a suitable candidate for small-diameter grafts. Due to their improper compliance and elasticity, they are prone to intimal hyperplasia. Hence, research has focussed on the engineering of small-diameter vessel tissues over the last few years. The aim of the project is to design and fabricate a cost-effective and off-the-shelf small-diameter vascular graft to potentially mimic the natural vessel. Poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) is a good choice for small-diameter vessel tissue engineering because of its tuneable mechanical properties, elasticity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, hemocompatibility, inexpensiveness, and transparency. This project hypothesizes that a more durable PGS derivatives could support smooth muscle cells and the addition of some groups like methacrylate, and polycarbonate polyols could control the mechanical strength and biodegradability. Moreover, the PGS modification with nanofillers like Polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS), could not only have a positive impact on increasing elasticity but also hemocompatibility through its anti-protein and anti-platelet adsorption properties.