Repurposing Cryopreserved Slaughterhouse Waste for Vascular Replacement Therapy

Current vascular replacement therapy (VRT) standards primarily rely on autografting and allografting. However, autografting is associated with substantial donor site comorbidities, while the limited availability of graft tissues constrains allografting. Although synthetic alternatives are widely accessible, they are prone to long-term failure. This study explores an alternative approach to help address the critical supply-demand mismatch for VRT by repurposing cryopreserved slaughterhouse-derived waste aortas. Using an in vitro perfusion-based model, we demonstrated that these tissues maintained their structural and functional integrity when subjected to simulated bradycardia, normocardia, and tachycardia. No significant differences were observed in relative vascular segment permeability, based on our diffusion parameter, when tested with tracer molecules mimicking blood proteins and bioactive factors. These findings highlight the feasibility of using these cryopreserved vessels for xenografting strategies, which are becoming increasingly viable due to technological developments in genetic editing, efforts to reduce the reliance on animal testing, and the abundance of viable biological waste tissues generated from the growing demand for meat products.