Title : Development and preclinical evaluation of advanced bio-textile architectures for targeted endovascular cardiovascular implants
Abstract:
Due to a growing population suffering from ischemic heart disease, designing durable vascular prostheses remains a crucial hurdle in surgical and interventional cardiology. Conventional synthetic polymer grafts often fail in small-caliber vessels due to compliance mismatch, intimal hyperplasia, and thrombosis. Advanced textile structures, specifically warp-knitted and electrospun biotextiles, offer highly customizable porosity, mechanical compliance, and biological integration, making them highly promising solutions for next-generation endovascular implants.
This study aimed to engineer a novel, biopolymer-coated textile scaffold designed for small-diameter vascular reconstruction and structurally evaluate its mechanical integrity, cellular biocompatibility, and hemocompatibility under simulated physiological conditions.
A tubular scaffold was fabricated using a hybridized warp-knitting architectural layout of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers. This structural framework was combined with electrospun poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) nano-textiles to optimize sub-micron porosity. The resulting textile matrices were cross-linked with an anti-thrombogenic heparin-loaded gelatin hydrogel coating. Radial compliance and longitudinal tensile strength were tested using dynamic mechanical analysis under simulated arterial blood pressures (80–120 mmHg). Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were cultured on the matrices for 14 days to evaluate cellular proliferation via MTT assay. Hemocompatibility was validated through a dynamic whole-blood incubation assay to measure platelet activation.
The engineered hybrid bio-textile exhibited an optimal microporosity of 45 µm, which is highly suited to cellular ingrowth while entirely preventing transmural blood leakage. The longitudinal tensile strength (22.4 ± 1.5 MPa) and radial compliance tightly matched native human coronary arteries, minimizing structural stress boundaries. Quantitative biocompatibility testing showed a significant 134% increase in HUVEC proliferation by day 7 (p < 0.01), demonstrating rapid endothelialization. Furthermore, the heparinized hydrogel coating achieved an 88% reduction in surface platelet adhesion and clot activation compared to standard uncoated PET textile grafts.
The hybridized nano-textile scaffold successfully demonstrates the required mechanical compliance, rapid endothelialization potential, and excellent hemocompatibility needed for cardiovascular applications. These findings indicate that integrating advanced texturing mechanics with bioactive coatings presents a viable clinical pathway toward successful, small-diameter synthetic vascular implants that reduce long-term thrombosis risk.
