Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Development And Characterization Of Plga And Eptfe Blood Vessel Mimics Using Gene Expression Analysis, Michael Gibbons, Sarah Ur

Biomedical Engineering

Tissue engineered blood vessels (TEBV’s) have the potential to act not only as a replacement for diseased vessels, but also as a testing platform for intravascular devices such as stents. To this end, the goal of this study was to develop protocols for the construction of TEBV’s composed of human vascular cells and either expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) or poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA), as well as a protocol for gene expression in those TEBV’s. Initial experiments involved only human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC’s), but after low cell confluency and spreading in single-sodded vessels a second cell type, human umbilical vein smooth …