Use of polycaprolactone grafts for small-diameter blood vessels

Sevostyanova V.V.¹, Elgudin Ya.², Glushkova T.V.¹, Wnek G.³, Lubysheva T.³, Emancipator S.², Kudryavtseva Yu.A.¹, Borisov V.V.¹, Golovkin A.S.¹, Barabash L.S.¹

1) Federal State Budgetary Facility "Scientific Research Institute for Complex Problems of Cardiovascular Diseases" under the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Department of Experimental and Clinical Cardiology, Kemerovo, Russia
2) Cleveland VA Medical Center, Department of Surgery,
3) Case Western Reserve University, Department of Macromolecules Science and Engineering, Cleveland, OH, USA

Current trends are toward actively developing approaches of tissue engineering, aimed at creating vascular grafts of small diameter. This is due to the existing in cardiovascular surgery demand for prostheses to be used in coronary artery bypass grafting. The present work was undertaken in order to assess possibilities of using small-diameter vascular grafts made of biodegradable polymer polycaprolactone by means of electrospinning. The authors studied physico-mechanical properties and structure of polycaprolactone grafts, as well as their thromboresistance and patency after implantation into the vascular bed of rats. The obtained results demonstrated optimal physico-mechanical properties of the vascular grafts, their biocompatibility, endothelialisation of the internal surface, and infiltration of the graft’s wall by cells with the formation of new tissue, accompanied and followed by the development of an extensive intimal layer in the zones of the anastomoses.

Hence, the study showed possibilities of using polycaprolactone grafts as vascular prostheses, however requiring their further modification which would promote and contribute to a decrease in hyperplasia of connective tissue in the graft’s lumen.

KEY WORDS: tissue engineering, vascular graft, polycaprolactone, electrospinning.

P. 49-53

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