Abstract:

BACKGROUND: The artificial blood vessel is vital organs widely used in the field of clinical tissue repair, but small-caliber artificial blood vessels are prone to embolism, and difficult to maintain smooth for a long time, although tissue engineered vessels can be used as a permanent replacement, it costs a long time to culture, which does not meet the clinical practice of vascular repair. It is an ideal method of vascular repair and reconstruction that timely repair blood vessels, restore blood flow, also form biological vessels in vivo and maintain long-term patency.
OBJECTIVE: To study the feasibility of cultivating the small-caliber blood vessels under in vivo blood flow circulation with modified porcine small intestinal submucosa as the scaffold.
METHODS: The seed cells including vascular endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells were separated from the canine saphenous artery, which were mixed with collagen gel and planted on the small intestinal submucosa films, these films were wrapped up into 30 three-layer tubular scaffolds around 3 mm diameter polyethylene tubes, and the scaffolds were implanted into the defect of canine femoral artery for anastomosis as experimental group, while those were implanted into the subcutaneous tissue served as control. After operation, the formation process of blood vessels was evaluated by Doppler color ultrasound, histology detection, immunohistochemistry examination.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: At 12 weeks postoperatively, 14 scaffolds had kept well patency in the experimental group, vascular biologic structures evidently formed, the seed cells well proliferated, the lumen surface was completely covered with endothelial cells, smooth muscular cells morphology and distribution were good. In control group, tube structure was incomplete, seed cells proliferated poorly, lumen surface was covered without endothehal cells. By in vivo tissue engineering technology, the small-caliber blood vessels could be cultivated directly under the circulation of blood flow.