Fabricating synthetic, small-diameter vascular templates via touch-spinning

Area of Science:

• Biomaterials Science
• Cardiovascular Engineering
• Regenerative Medicine

Background:

• Cardiovascular diseases are a leading global cause of death.
• Current synthetic vascular grafts have high failure rates due to mechanical incompatibility with native vessels.
• There is a critical need for improved vascular graft materials and fabrication techniques.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate touch-spinning for fabricating vascular templates with native-like architecture and mechanical properties.
• To evaluate polydioxanone (PDO) and PDO/collagen I templates fabricated at different angles.
• To compare the mechanical performance of fabricated templates against the internal mammary artery (IMA) and saphenous vein (SV).

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of vascular templates using touch-spinning with Polydioxanone (PDO) and PDO/collagen I.
• Creation of crosshatch patterns at 25° and 40° along the longitudinal axis.
• Mechanical evaluation including longitudinal uniaxial testing, circumferential strength, percent elongation, suture retention, and burst pressure, compared to IMA and SV.

Main Results:

• Touch-spinning successfully created crosshatch patterns in PDO and PDO/collagen I templates.
• PDO/collagen 40° templates demonstrated the best overall mechanical performance.
• Templates exhibited comparable longitudinal mechanical properties to native vessels and surpassed circumferential strength benchmarks, though with lower elongation than saphenous veins.

Conclusions:

• Touch-spinning is a viable method for manufacturing synthetic vascular grafts.
• PDO/collagen templates show potential for bypass grafting due to favorable mechanical properties.
• Further optimization of suture retention and burst pressure is needed for clinical translation.