Tissue-engineered small-diameter vascular grafts have been developed as a promising alternative to native veins or arteries for replacement therapy. However, there is still a crucial need to improve the current approaches to render the tissue-engineered blood vessels more favorable for clinical applications. A completely biological blood vessel (3-mm inner diameter) was constructed by culturing a 50:50 mixture of bovine smooth muscle cells (SMCs) with neonatal human dermal fibroblasts in fibrin gels. After 30 days of culture under pulsatile stretching, the engineered blood vessels demonstrated an average burst pressure of 913.3±150.1 mmHg (n=6), a suture retention (53.3±15.4 g) that is suitable for implantation, and a compliance (3.1%±2.5% per 100 mmHg) that is comparable to native vessels. These engineered grafts contained circumferentially aligned collagen fibers, microfibrils and elastic fibers, and differentiated SMCs, mimicking a native artery. These promising mechanical and biochemical properties were achieved in a very short culture time of 30 days, suggesting the potential of co-culturing SMCs with fibroblasts in fibrin gels to generate functional small-diameter vascular grafts for vascular reconstruction surgery.
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