Fig. 1.

Tissue engineered blood vessels; A–C: the first clinically used sheet-based tissue engineered blood vessel tested on three human patients for application as high pressure arteries, (A) tissue engineered graft was implanted between the axillary vein and the humeral artery as an arteriovenous shunt, (B) the vessel exhibited normal suturing and surgical handling properties, (C) the shunt maintained high flow without signs of aneurysm or restenosis even after 6 months. Reprinted from [14] with permission from Nature Publishing Group. D–O: A comparative histological analysis of human pericyte cell-seeded TEVGs (D–I), unseeded scaffolds (J–L), and native rat aorta (M–O). The Hematoxylin and Eosin (D, G, J and M), (H&E), Masson’s trichrome (E, H, K and N), and Verhoeff-Van Gieson (F, I, L and O) stainings demonstrated remodeling of the tissue in the TEHV construct enriched with collagen and elastin similar to the native aorta. G, H and I are magnified images for the wall cross-section of D, E and F. Arrows indicate the remodeled tissue while ES stands for electrospun scaffold layer. The remaining PEUU material was unspecifically stained in black by Verhoeff-van Gieson stain in I and L. Figures reprinted from [17] with permission from Elsevier Science.