Current Status of Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering - Special Issue

The development of vascular and heart valve surgeries have contributed to improve outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease. However, there are drawbacks, such as risk of infection and lack of growth potential. Tissue engineered vascular graft (TEVG) and tissue engineered heart valve (TEHV) hold great promise to address these drawbacks as the ideal TEVG and TEHV is easily implanted, biocompatible, non thrombogenic, durable, degradable, and ultimately remodels into nativelike tissue. In general, the TEVG and/or TEHV concept consists of scaffold, cells for scaffold seeding, and a subsequent remodeling process driven by cell accumulation and proliferation, and/or biochemical and mechanical signaling. Despite rapid progress in the field over the past decade, small-diameter arterial TEVG and TEHV have not been translated into clinical applications successfully. To successfully utilize TEVGs and TEHVs clinically, further elucidation of the mechanisms for TEVG and TEHV remodeling and further translational research outcome evaluations will be required.