# Readily Available Stem Cell-Based Vascular Grafts for Emergent Surgical Care

> **NIH NIH R01** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $664,327

## Abstract

Patients who have undergone vascular trauma resulting from penetrating (e.g. blast injury) or blunt (e.g. fracture
and contusion from a traffic accident) trauma often experience severe damage to their small-diameter peripheral
arteries (2-4mm, e.g. tibial or brachial arteries) and require surgical intervention to bypass or replace the injured
vessel segments. As the accessibility of saphenous veins may be low in patients of vascular trauma due to
severe injuries or loss of more than one lower extremity as a result of blast injury or severe traffic accident, and
the application of synthetic vascular grafts can be hindered by the potential risk of infection due to the contagious
nature of these types of injuries, an alternative source of vascular graft is in dire need. Acellular tissue engineered
vascular grafts (TEVGs) therefore may offer a readily available treatment for emergency care for patients of
vascular trauma. Although TEVGs of significant mechanical strength can be developed from culturing primary
human vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) followed by decellularization, this platform has several obstacles
which prevent it from ultimately serving victims of vascular trauma. The finite expandability, limited accessibility,
and donor-to-donor functional variations among primary VSMCs may hinder the efficiency of TEVG production.
Further, as small-diameter TEVGs require autologous endothelial cell (EC) coating prior to implantation to avoid
blood clothing, potential dysfunction of patient ECs due to either advanced age or disease, as well as the
significant time required to derive and expand the patient's autologous ECs, could prevent applicability in treating
acute vascular injury. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), self-renewable cells derived from somatic
cells by the ectopic expression of stem cell factors, provide an excellent alternative to address the complications
of primary cell based TEVGs. As hiPSCs can be differentiated into virtually any somatic cell type, including
VSMCs and ECs (hiPSC-VSMCs and hiPSC-ECs), these cells provide an unlimited cell source to obtain vascular
cells to construct TEVGs of comparable quality (hiPSC-TEVGs). Further, by engineering the expression of
human leukocyte antigen (HLA) proteins, non- or low-immunogenic universal hiPSCs could be established,
making the hiPSC-TEVGs suitable for implantation into any patient. Through utilizing the hiPSC platform, TEVGs
for patients of vascular trauma can be developed on a massive scale, and of predictable and reproducible
mechanical strength. Additionally, through developing and cryopreserving allogeneic universal hiPSC-ECs,
these cells could be immediately applied to endothelialize TEVGs for small-diameter vascular intervention. Using
hiPSC-VSMCs, we have successfully developed TEVGs with mechanical strength approaching that of
saphenous veins, the common native grafts in vascular injury repair. Therefore, to achieve this future application
of hiPSC-TE...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10189694
- **Project number:** 5R01HL150352-02
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Yibing Qyang
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $664,327
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-07-01 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10189694

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10189694, Readily Available Stem Cell-Based Vascular Grafts for Emergent Surgical Care (5R01HL150352-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10189694. Licensed CC0.

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