Abstract

There is an urgent clinical demand to develop a functional small diameter vascular graft with long-term patency, which mainly relies on the anticoagulation and endothelialization of the vascular graft. In addition, improved degradation of vascular graft provides more space for cell infiltration and facilitates remodeling of blood vessel. In this study, an elastic and biomimetic nanofibrous vascular scaffold with improved degradability was prepared by adding poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) into the poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA)/poly(L-lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) (PLCL) blend using thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) technique. The incorporation of PLGA also improved the hydrophilicity of the composite scaffold. Then the vascular scaffold was surface modified by combination of heparin and stromal cell-derived factor-1 alpha (SDF-1α). The results of whole blood clotting kinetics and plasma recalcification profiles indicated that heparinized modification significantly enhanced the anticoagulation of vascular scaffold. In vitro cell culture assays demonstrated the immobilized SDF-1α facilitated recruitment of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), migration and proliferation of mature endothelial cells, human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), and expression of VE-cadherin/CD144 and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) genes in HUVECs, thereby accelerating the endothelialization of the modified vascular scaffold. Besides, the nanofibrous vascular scaffold modified with heparin and SDF-1α inhibited the proliferation of human vascular smooth muscle cells (HVSMCs). Therefore, the phase separated nanofibrous vascular scaffold modified with heparin and SDF-1α shows the promising in vitro performance as a functional small diameter vascular graft.