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Electrospinning of poly(decamethylene terephthalate) to support vascular graft applications

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

Recently, poly(nonamethylene terephthalate) (PAT(n=9)) and poly(decamethylene terephthalate) (PAT(n=10))
gained increasing interest since it was reported to exhibit enhanced endothelial cell adhesion and viability
compared to other poly(alkylene terephthalate) (PAT) analogues. Enhanced endothelial cell interactivity is of
particular interest when targeting cardiovascular applications, more specifically, for creating synthetic vascular
bypass grafts. In this study, the potential of PAT(n=10) to be applied as synthetic bypass graft has been further
investigated. After a thorough physico-chemical characterization of the synthesized PAT(n=10), micro-sized fibers
were processed via electrospinning. In a first part, the polymer-related parameters were investigated and optimized
to obtain uniform beadless fibers. By changing the solution composition and device set-up, various fiber
morphologies (i.e. random, aligned and porous fibers) were obtained and subjected to an in vitro biological
evaluation with Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVECs), while exploiting a clinically used synthetic
graft (i.e. Dacron®) as benchmark. It was shown that the cells seeded onto all PAT(n=10) fibers exhibited a superior
metabolic activity compared to Dacron after 7 days of culture, while aligned and porous fibers had a
beneficial effect on the survival of HUVECs. This study is a first step towards the application of PATs as novel
cardiovascular bypass graft, fabricated via electrospinning.
Journal: Eur Polym J
ISSN: 0014-3057
Volume: 165
Keywords:Poly(decamethylene terephthalate), Electrospinning, Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells, Live/dead staining
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