Optimism about microfabrication, tissue-engineered heart valves

4.03.2007

Current Progress Toward a Tissue Engineered Heart Valve

SPEAKER: Ali Khademhosseini, PhD; BWH, HMS

Microengineering the Cellular Environment through the Interplay between Microfabrication and Biomaterials

SPEAKER: John Mayer Jr., MD; HMS, CHB

(No Video Available)

FORUM REPORT:

Two distinguished medical professionals discussed the future of microfabrication and valve replacement devices at the April 3 CIMIT Forum at Simches Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Presenting were John Mayer Jr., MD, professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School; and senior associate in cardiovascular surgery, Children's Hospital Boston; and Ali Khademhosseini, PhD, associate bioengineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital; and assistant professor, Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Mayer discussed, "Current Progress Toward a Tissue Engineered Heart Valve."

He said the idea of his valve research developed during a conversation with Joseph Vacanti, MD, a doctor-researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital who at the time was with Children's Hospital. A research interest of Dr. Vacanti, who has been supported by CIMIT, is tissue engineering and the development of body parts.

Dr. Mayer noted that valve replacement devices in pediatric patients have major limitation, including the reality that a growing child needs heart valves that will expand.

His presentation reviewed studies of efforts to help children with congenital heart defects, including using progenitor cells that can be obtained by minimally invasive methods from bone marrow and circulation blood, and which utilize new polymer scaffolds with different biomechanical characteristics and new techniques for the fabrication of valve leaflets.

Dr. Mayer said that work is being done in pigs and lambs. He estimated that his research could reach clinical trials in "five to eight years."

Dr. Khademhosseini's presentation focused on "Microengineering the Cellular Environment through the Interplay between Microfabrication and Biomaterials."

He described research at the interface between materials and microfabrication technologies "to control cell-cell, cell-soluble factor and cell-matrix interactions in 2D and 3D tissue constructions."