Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Engineering arterial substitutes that recapitulate vessel microstructure and mimic native physiological responses

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dc.contributor Harvard--MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.
dc.contributor Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
dc.creator Miranda-Nieves, David.
dc.date 2021-10-15T15:29:17Z
dc.date 2021-10-15T15:29:17Z
dc.date 2020
dc.date 2020
dc.date.accessioned 2023-03-01T07:20:32Z
dc.date.available 2023-03-01T07:20:32Z
dc.identifier https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132985
dc.identifier 1263358970
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/275681
dc.description Thesis: Ph. D., Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, September, 2020
dc.description Cataloged from the official PDF version of thesis.
dc.description Includes bibliographical references (pages 107-118).
dc.description Engineering small caliber (< 6mm) arterial grafts remains an unsolved problem. Current synthetic and autologous grafts suffer from short and long-term limitations including decreased patency rates, risk of bacterial infection, and compliance mismatching that results in neointimal hyperplasia. Tissue engineering is seen as a solution; however, a true arterial replacement remains elusive. Despite the numerous publications that have appeared over the last three decades, most reported strategies mimic functional and structural arterial properties to a limited extent. Furthermore, these strategies require long maturation times before implantation and carry the risk of failure in patients, who are often elderly with multiple comorbidities. Our central hypothesis was that living arterial substitutes that display normal physiological responses after in vivo implantation can be engineered through the controlled assembly of vascular cells and free-standing collagen sheets of controlled fibril orientation in a manner that recapitulates native vessel microstructure. We first present a scalable and continuous strategy for generating strong, free-standing, ultrathin, and centimeter-wide collagen sheets with controlled anisotropy using a flow-focusing approach. This strategy represents the first of its kind to generate anisotropic collagen sheets with control over nano- and macro-molecular properties. Next, controlled assembly of vascular cells and free-standing collagen sheets allowed us to design living blood vessels that recapitulated the arterial wall microstructure, and through structural, mechanical and biological characterization confirmed mimicry of native physiologic properties. We believe that the scalable fabrication schemes, and thorough characterization techniques, presented here will serve as a strong reference for future blood vessel tissue engineering efforts.
dc.description by David Miranda-Nieves.
dc.description Ph. D.
dc.description Ph.D. Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology
dc.format 118 pages
dc.format application/pdf
dc.language eng
dc.publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology
dc.rights MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
dc.rights http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
dc.subject Harvard--MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.
dc.title Engineering arterial substitutes that recapitulate vessel microstructure and mimic native physiological responses
dc.type Thesis


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