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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Advisor: Elliot L. Chaikof, M.D. Ph.D. (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School)
Committee:
Mark G. Allen, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Rudolph L. Gleason, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Robert M. Nerem, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Steve L. Stice, Ph.D. (University of Georgia)
For small diameter (<6mm) blood vessel replacements, lack of collaterals and vascular disease preclude homografts; while synthetic analogues, ePTFE, expanded polytetrafluroethylene, and PET, polyethyleneterephathalate, are prone to acute thrombosis and restenosis. It is postulated that the hierarchical assembly of cell populated matrices fabricated from protein analogues provides a new design strategy for generating a structurally viable tissue engineered vascular graft. To this end, synthetic elastin and collagen fiber analogs offer a novel strategy for creating tissue engineered vascular grafts with mechanical and biological properties that match or exceed those of native vessels. The objective of this work is to develop techniques for the fabrication of prosthetic vascular grafts from a series of extracellular matrix analogs composed of nanofibrous collagen matrices and elastin-mimetic proteins, with and without cells, and subsequently evaluate their biocompatibility and mechanical properties. The first aim relates to the fabrication and mechanical analysis of vascular grafts made from aforementioned protein analogs. The second aim relates to the seeding and proliferation of rodent mesenchymal stem cells on protein-based composites to recapitulate the media of native vasculature. The third aim relates to assessing the in vivo biocompatibility and stability of tissue engineered vascular grafts.
