Charactertization of poly (D, L-LACTIDE-CO-GLYCOLYDE) film for in vivo engineered biotube coating

• Main Author: Felix Fennardi
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/61545
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Cardiovascular disease remains on the top list of cause of death worldwide. Currently, the need for large diameter vascular graft are well-addressed by Dacron® and ePTFE synthetic graft. However, small diameter artificial vascular grafts remain an unmet clinical need. The advancement of vascular tissue engineering could provide a solution to artificially construct arterial prosthesis. In vivo engineered biotube shows good promise in vascular tissue engineering due to ability of recruiting autologous cells and elimination of in vitro manipulation steps. The limitation was, however, poor cell attachment and structural integrity of the conduit to the silicone implanted tubing. The development of a coating that can promote cell attachment on the silicone tubing and is able to give mechanical support was proposed to address this problem. Poly (lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) is a widely used bioresorbable polymer in biomedical applications. It exhibits good mechanical properties, is non-toxic, and has remarkable cytocompatibility. Keeping these superior properties in mind, PLGA films were fabricated using solvent casting and melt pressing method and their feasibility as a biotube coating was studied. The results suggested PLGA films were promising for such application, in terms of mechanical properties and cytocompatibility. It is believed that the approach studied in this project could be potentially translated into clinical application in the future.