For over thirty years, a major goal of vascular surgery has been to improve bypass surgery through the development of an ideal prosthetic graft. Although saphenous vein is the preferred substrate for occluded small to medium veins, frequently it is unavailable or unsuitable to a great number of patients who need this surgery. Two of the problems that have impaired the development of such a graft include poor cell attachment upon seeding grafts and poor retention of cells by grafts when exposed to in vitro or in vivo flow conditions. Although the use of fibronectin has resulted in some improvements with respect to these parameters, development of grafts is still far from complete. This proposal describes experiments on mussel adhesive protein (MAP, BioPolymers, Inc. Farmington, CT). This protein has the potential to increase the adhesion of cells to grafts in vitro and in vivo. MAP has been found to be effective as a cell attachment factor in vitro and is biocompatible with cells and tissues. Experiments are designed to explore attachment efficiency of cells to grafts and the retention of these cells by grafts during perfusion.
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