Abstract
Cardiovascular disease has become the leading cause of death in high income countries worldwide and the available treatment is not able to provide a complete recovery. Tissue engineering offers a possibility to construct autologous vein replacements for surgery. In this review we summarize approaches leading to artificial vascular graft construction. We discuss biomaterials currently in use, various drug delivery systems and the most appropriate cell cultures for vein engineering. Despite the progress in biomaterials and drug delivery systems, generating a suitable tissue microenvironment and selection of the appropriate cell population for graft seeding remains a major challenge. Here we focus on endothelial progenitor stem cells as the most suitable cell type for vascular graft construction. We discuss its sources, isolation techniques and differentiation procedures.
Highlights
Cardiovascular disease has become one of the most significant civilization health problems in the population of high income countries [1]
The Endothelial Progenitor Cells (EPCs) phenotype is shared among various cell types present in bone marrow or peripheral blood [84]
It was shown that regulated delivery of angiogenic and blood vessel maturating factors was able to form functionally mature vessels composed of ECs and smooth muscle cells (SMCs) in vivo [170,171]
Summary
Cardiovascular disease has become one of the most significant civilization health problems in the population of high income countries [1]. Tissue engineering approaches used mixed populations of endothelial and mesodermal cells for their applications. Induced mobilization of bone marrow stem cells into the blood stream increases EPC counts in peripheral blood and is a desired effect prior to isolation.
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