Page 139 - Tailoring Electrospinning Techniques for Regenerative Medicine - Marc Simonet

6.6 Conclusion
While PCL is widely use in tissue engineering and has FDA approved applications, it is not suitable for in-situ valve tissue engineering due to its inferior fatigue resistance. In contrast, the fatigue resistant mechanical properties of the PCL2kU4Un material are an important step forward in developing in-situ tissue engineered heart valves. In-vitro testing is of great importance prior to in-vivo implantation. However, in its current set-up it cannot fully predict erosion/ degradation in an in-vivo situation at the longer term. This study shows that, despite that the long-term in-vivo durability of the polymeric valve has to be improved, our selected electrospun PCL2kU4Un valve designs are promising for in-situ tissue engineering of heart valves. They showed initial functionality with cellular infiltration and subsequent tissue formation, proven, to our best knowledge for the first time, the feasibility of in-situ heart valve tissue engineering with an electrospun synthetic polymer.
6.7 Acknowledgements
This research forms part of the iValve project of the research program of the BioMedical Materials institute, co-founded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic A airs, Agriculture and Innovation. The financial contribution of the Nederlandse Hartstichtig is gratefully acknowledged.
FROM A POLYMER TOWARDS AN IN-SITU TISSUE ENGINEERED HEART VALVE
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