Antibody-Directed Cellularization of Heart Valve Implants

Introduction. Valvular heart disease is a common diagnosis worldwide, with many of these patients eventually needing an operative intervention. There are significant limitations to existing heart valve replacements, including their inability to grow with patients, a life-time anticoagulation therapy with mechanical valves, and progressive tissue degeneration with bioscaffolds. Tissue-engineering techniques may play a prominent future role in the development of heart valve replacement therapy. More recent laboratory efforts have focused on identifying appropriate scaffold materials, progenitor cell sources, and seeding/conditioning techniques. However, this involves the time-consuming task of isolating and culturing cells before adding them to a valve construct and then conditioning the resulting construct in vitro, a process that can take many weeks or even months. As an alternative, we proposed to develop a heart valve bioscaffold with antibody-directed reseeding properties. The goal is to develop a heart valve construct that is easy to fabricate, has short preparation time (hours), and the ability to remodel and grow with the patient.