Native Endothelium-mimicking Nanomatrices and Applications

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death worldwide and, to improve vascular grafting and stents, scientists are turning to nanotechnology. While synthetic grafts are useful in many artery bypass surgery cases, grafts are prone to thrombosis due to platelet adhesion and intimal hyperplasia due to smooth muscle proliferation. Stenting closed arteries is also a widely used treatment; however, stents also cause injury to the artery and can cause similar types of thrombosis and hyperplasia as grafts. The lack of endothelialization of grafts and stents is a major limitation of these implants, and nanotechnology may provide several strategies to overcome this defi cit. Since the native extracellular matrix consists of nanofi bers, it is not surprising to fi nd that studies1Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294. aE-mail: andukuri@uab.edu bE-mail: chidi89@uab.edu cE-mail: adamblak@uab.edu dE-mail: hwjun@uab.edu *Corresponding authorList of abbreviations after the text.