| According to the World Heart Organization, cardiovascular diseases claim 17.1 million lives each year, from which congenital heart defects account for 26%. As the most frequent congenital anomaly and the leading cause of death, congenital heart disease is an attractive target for tissue engineering research. New drugs and innovative devices have improved the quality of life for pediatric patients with congenital heart defects, but have not necessarily decreased the morbidity and mortality. The challenging target to engineer a native blood vessel stems from the need to find substitutes for pediatric patients born with congenital defects. With the advances in the fields of biomaterials and tissue engineering, scientists have been exploring the use of synthetic non-degradable, synthetic resorbable, natural polymers and completely cell based approach. Some of the approaches take advantage of materials such as collagen or use of natural components in synthetic materials.;One promising alternative involves using a tissue-engineered graft. The tissue engineering graft functions to bring various cells of the vasculature in close proximity to one another to enable intercellular signaling which facilitates cell adhesion, migration and differentiation. Using the classical tissue-engineering paradigm, autologous cells are seeded on a tubular scaffold, which provides surfaces for cell attachment and space for neotissue formation. The ideal graft requires a range of characteristics including strength, biocompatibility, biostability and ability to adapt to the hemodynamic conditions in the short and long term.;A number of various GAG materials were investigated in this dissertation and various scaffold and bioreactor design. And it was concluded that carboxymethylated dextran sulfate chitosan was an excellent base material for SMC and EC colonization as well as use in vascular graft material. The 3D in vitro studies indicated that the material had promising results for development of a tissue engineered vascular graft. |
