[Methods for the pre-treatment of biological tissues for vascular scaffold]

Today, the blood vessel substitutes are in large demand for coronary and peripheral bypass procedures, and the demand cannot be met by conventional sources. This problem will be solved by applying tissue-engineered blood vessel in clinics. The prefabrication of vascular scaffold will be involved in engineering a blood vessel substitute. Biological tissues are important biomaterials fabricating vascular scaffold which can offer better constructs for adhesion and growth of cells onto synthetic materials. Because of immediate degradation of biological tissues obtained from the abattoir, cadaver or patient and the presence of antigenicity in allogenic or xenogenic tissues, the fresh biological tissues can not directly be preserved and applied. The use and preservation of these natural biomaterials have typically required pre-treatment aimed at (1) reducing the antigenicity of the materials, (2) enhancing the resistance of the materials to enzymatic degradation, (3) stabilizing the structure of the tissues and maintaining their mechanical properties. Physical and chemical methods for the pre-treatment of biological tissues are available. The predominant chemical agents that have been investigated for the pre-treatment of biological tissues for vascular scaffold are glutaraldehyde, polyepoxy compound, carbodiimide, genipin and proanthocyanidin. Typical and particularly promising physical pre-treatment of biological tissues for vascular scaffold is dye-mediated photooxidation. The crosslinking mechanisms of all classes of pre-treatments and the effects of pre-treatments on antigenicity, biostability, mechanical properties, cytoxicity and calcification of treated tissues are described in this article. The advantages and disadvantages of all pre-treatments are also reviewed. The trend of pre-treatment of biological tissues is to investigate and exploit the naturally occurring crosslinking reagent with less cytoxicity. Meanwhile, dye-mediated photooxidation crosslink is also a promising pre-treatment which should be widely applied in vascular scaffold.