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July 31, 2007

Research

Researcher gets grant to find matter of the heart

An assistant professor is trying to create a material to improve a disease treatment.

Story by: A.J. Eaton

The Shorthorn staff

By creating artificial blood vessels, one assistant professor hopes to save lives.

Jian Yang, biomedical engineering assistant professor, has begun a two-year study to rebuild blood vessels by building artificial templates new vessels will grow from. The American Heart Association gave $130,000 for the research.

Atherosclerotic vascular disease, a gradual narrowing and hardening of blood vessels, is the No. 1 killer in the U.S. It is treated with bypass grafts, in which blood vessels are taken from one part of the body and used to replace damaged blood vessels in conjunction with synthetics.

Often these grafts fail over time due to rejection or inflammation, leaving the patient with the option of more surgery or death.

Yang’s research aims to beat rejection and inflammation issues by using the patient’s own tissue with a biodegradable graft. The tissue is grown from a synthetic, biocompatible and biodegradable template, which can be made into any shape.

Yang said his task is to find the right material.

“No other materials will work because they are stiff, not flexible,” he said. “So we are looking for a soft, elastic material to mimic tissue that will eventually degrade, leaving only new, healthy tissue.”

Biomedical engineering chair Khosrow Behbehani said he is very happy for the department and for Yang, who is in his second year there.

“Yang’s research is quite important, a very hot topic and a very competitive area right now,” Behbehani said. “Developing biomaterials is a big deal and will bring esteem to the department.”

Yang said the blood vessels he is attempting to recreate are six millimeters in diameter.

The disease normally occurs in the coronary artery. When this artery is blocked, the heart doesn’t get blood, and eventually the tissue surrounding the heart and the heart itself die. The normal treatment is heart bypass surgery, in which a doctor must take a vessel from another part of the body to use as a replacement vessel.

After deciding on a material to use, Yang will develop cell cultures with the template to see how well the synthetic material mimics the organic tissue. Eventually, trials for the templates will be conducted in pigs and then humans, but it is a long way away, Yang said.