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| SPEAKER |
| Nicolas L'Heureux |
| Cytograft Tissue Engineering |
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MEETING
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May 2009 |
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| BIOGRAPHY |
Nicolas L'Heureux holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from Laval University and was an AHA fellow at the Bioengineering Department of UCSD. He has been an early proponent of the concept of completely biological tissue engineering even for tissues that play significant mechanical roles. At a time when synthetic scaffolds were seen as a defining part of any tissue engineered construct, he developed a method termed 'Sheet-Based Tissue Engineering' (SBTE) that allows the creation of completely biological, living, autologous and human tissues that display remarkable mechanical strength without the need for any exogenous scaffolding. The introduction of this approach marks a paradigm shift away from the 'off-the-shelf' approaches that have repeatedly failed in the past, towards a more realistic approach where the patient's own cells produce the basic organ structure in vitro. In 2000, he co-founded, with Todd McAllister, Cytograft Tissue Engineering to develop this platform technology.
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| TALK |
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Heart Muscle Regenerative Therapy
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| DESCRIPTION |
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Focusing first on vascular products, Cytograft started the world's first clinical trial of a tissue-engineered blood vessel for arterial bypass. In this trial, blood vessels were produced for patients (age up to 89 years) suffering from end-stage renal disease. Vessels displayed artery-like burst pressures and satisfactory suture retention strength. Vessels were implanted in 10 patients with primary patency up to 28 months at time of submission. Ultrasound examinations demonstrated an increase in graft compliance to achieve physiological levels. Limited histological samples indicated a remodelling of the vessel wall with expression of smooth muscle cell markers. This study establishes for the first time that completely biological and autologous blood vessels produced in vitro have the potential for long-term patency and appear to have an efficacy level superior to synthetic grafts. Dr L'Hereux will discuss how SBTE can now be used to develop other vascular products such as patches, covered stents and suture material.
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