Abstract Coronary heart disease and peripheral artery disease affects millions of Americans each year, and is often treated with bypass surgery to reroute the blood supply around a blocked artery. However, patients do not always have a saphenous vein suitable for an arterial bypass graft. The structural similarities between animals and plants inspired a more recent strategy of decellularizing plants in order to generate perfusable scaffolds. Unlike animal tissue, plants are primarily composed of cellulose which can offer a promising, nonthrombogenic alternative capable of promoting cell attachment and redirecting blood flow. The immediate goal of this project is to succeed in tissue engineering and testing a patent, nonthrombogenic vessel for engraftment that mimics the mechanical and structural properties of native vessels. We hypothesize that the mechanical and biochemical microenvironment provided by the decellularized plant leaves will promote initial endothelial cell and vascular smooth muscle cell adhesion, maintain vessel patency, and that the addition of fluid shear stress preconditioning will promote long-term endothelialization of the scaffold and minimize early graft occlusions in vivo. Based on our preliminary pressure tests and cell adhesion assays showing that decellularized plant leaves maintain their mechanical properties and promote endothelial cell adhesion, we believe this work will provide a useful method of decellularizing plants and pre-conditioning of cells into a natural scaffold capable of successful engraftment. The proposed project will also enhance the research environment at Hofstra University by allowing undergraduate students to plan, execute and perform analysis of authentic hands-on research. This would allow them to acquire a broad range of skills in biomedical engineering that they would otherwise not have access to and is expected to have a significant impact on their future studies and career choices.

Public Health Relevance Statement Coronary heart disease and peripheral artery disease accounts for one out of six deaths in the United States each year and an estimated 16.5 million Americans live with coronary heart disease. Bypass surgery has been shown to decrease the risk of heart attack; however, many patients do not have a suitable saphenous vein, which is required to redirect blood flow around their blocked arteries. The proposed project will identify a strategy to use plant leaves to tissue engineer a vascular graft with patency and mechanical properties comparable to native vessels.