Engineering Commons^™

Proteoglycan Mimic Of The Glycocalyx To Treat Endothelial Dysfunction, Victoria Messerschmidt, Alyssa Panitch, James R. Wodicka

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Patients with kidney failure usually undergo hemodialysis, a process by which toxins produced by the body are filtered from the blood, in order to survive. The preferred form for vascular access is called an arteriovenousfistula (AVF), a surgically created connection between an artery and vein that is utilized to undergo dialysis. However, AVFs have a failure rate of 50-60%. One of the contributions to AVF failure is endothelial cell dysfunction and loss of glycocalyx, which allows neutrophils and other native cells into the media of the vessel, which causes an inflammatory response. Our lab addresses endothelial dysfunction by mimicking the …