Vascular Tissue Regeneration of the Hybrid ePTFE Graft for Adult Patients

Vascular Tissue engineering has drawn high interest due to its high demand in its vascular graft applications. We tissue-engineered a hybrid vascular graft consisting of tissues layers and non-biodegradable ePTFE by in vitro cell culture. Tissue formation was obtained by culturing vascular smooth muscle cells on the biodegradable polylactide scaffolds on the ePTFE surfaces. The fabricated hybrid ePTFE graft consisted of three layers, i.e. two biodegradable polylactide layers and a non-biodegradable ePTFE layer. The biodegradable layer was fabricated to have a porous structure with 30-60 µm pore sizes. Connection of biodegradable layers and ePTFE was obtained by filtering the polylactide solution through the porous ePTFE wall. For a better tissue formation coating of gelatin was performed on the luminal polylactide scaffolds. The generated tissues replaced the biodegradable layers on both inside and outside surfaces of the ePTFE.