Programmable Compliance in Small-Diameter Vascular Grafts by Design of Melt-Electrowritten Scaffold Architectures for In Situ Tissue Engineering.

ABSTRACT: In clinical practice, synthetic vascular grafts are advantageous due to their immediate availability but are burdened by high failure rates in small-diameter settings because of thrombogenicity, infections, and intimal hyperplasia (IH). A mismatch in compliance between graft and host vessel has been identified as a major contributor to the development of IH. Here, we propose a design strategy to fabricate polymeric small-diameter vascular graft scaffolds with programmable compliance based on a helical microfiber architecture via melt electrowriting (MEW). By controlling the fiber winding angle, this design strategy exploits, for the first time, the mechanical structure-function relationship of MEW scaffolds to enable tailored compliance covering the physiological range of arteries and vein

SUBMITTER: Mueller KMA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12805616 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature