Tissue-Engineered Vascular Grafts

Beat H. Walpoth, MD, PD, FAHA, is a trained cardiovascular surgeon, past Director of Cardiovascular Research in the Department of Surgery at Geneva University Hospital, Switzerland. He obtained his medical degree in 1972 at Zurich University, followed by Board of Surgery (including thoracic and cardiovascular) in 1982.  Postgraduate training included two years at the Peter Bent Brigham, a Harvard university hospital, Boston (1973-75) and cardiac transplantation at Stanford University (1982-84). Teaching appointments were held at Harvard Medical School, Universities of Bern and Geneva (Emeritus) and still ongoing in Verona University (Visiting Professor).  Dr. Walpoth is a recipient of several national and international awards, including the European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAO) Wichtig Award in the years 2008 and 2012 for his group’s research on Vascular Tissue Engineering.  He has over 150 publications, of which more than 50 are first-author papers, in peer reviewed journals. Past-president of the ESAO; organizer of the Annual Congresses of the ESAO in 2000 in Lausanne, and 2008 in Geneva. He has also been responsible for the bi-annual Swiss Experimental Surgery Symposium (2006, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2016).  As from 2004 he is a member of the International Faculty for Artificial Organs and the Director of the Internationally Co-tutored PhD Course in Biotechnology and Bioengineering (Universities of Geneva and Verona) since 2005.  Currently, he holds the presidency of the International Symposium on Vascular Tissue Engineering (ISVTE) and has created the TERMIS Thematic Group on Vascular Tissue Engineering.  His current main areas of interest include vascular tissue engineering and bio-artificial cardiovascular support. Dr. Gary Bowlin is a Professor and Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence at The University of Memphis in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Bowlin received his Ph.D. from the University of Akron in Biomedical Engineering and subsequently completed an American Heart Association sponsored post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Surgery at Akron City Hospital. Dr. Bowlin’s collaborative research has and continues to focus on the application of electrospun templates for tissue engineering and tissue regenerative applications as well as developing hemostatic products, all in the pursuit of saving lives and improving the quality of life. Dr. Bowlin’s laboratory has published extensively in these areas with over 130 peer-reviewed manuscripts.  Google Scholar data shows his group’s published works have been cited over 14,000 times, resulting in an H-index of 50.  To date, Dr. Bowlin has been granted 13 U.S. Patents and over 30 foreign patents.  These patents have helped to start five different companies and several commercially available and regulatory agency cleared products.  One of the most recent technologies being developed by St. Teresa Medical, Inc. has completed clinical trials for CE Marking. The latest company, Sweetbio, Inc., is Memphis based and commercializing (FDA 510K application submitted December 2017) novel guided tissue regeneration membranes for dental reconstruction procedures.  As a result of this inventiveness and impact, he was recently inducted as a Fellow into the National Academy of Inventors.  He is also the Inaugural and current President of the International Society for Biomedical Polymers and Polymeric Biomaterials. Dr. Joris Rotmans is an internist-nephrologist and associate professor at the Department of Nephrology of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in the Netherlands. He obtained his master’s degree in Medicine (cum laude) at the Free University in Amsterdam. He received his PhD in 2005 at University of Amsterdam on new therapeutic strategies for vascular access for hemodialysis whereupon he started his residency in Internal Medicine. In 2008-2009, he did postdoctoral research on vascular tissue engineering at the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Brisbane, Australia. Since 2010, he combines clinical work as internist-nephrologist with vascular and renal research at the Department of Nephrology of the LUMC. His main focus of research is vascular access for hemodialysis. He was the principle investigator of the DialysisXS consortium in which a novel method to generate in vivo engineered blood vessels was developed. He is co-founder of VACIS BV, a spin off company that aims to bring in situ engineered blood vessels to the clinic. In 2014, he received a prestigious VIDI grant from NWO that allows him to expand his research group and to continue his research on vascular access for hemodialysis.  He is the principle investigator of the LIPMAT trial, a multicenter, randomized clinical trial in the Netherlands in which the efficacy of liposomal prednisolone to enhance AVF maturation is evaluated. Furthermore, he is co-PI of the K+onsortium, a Dutch consortium funded by the Dutch Kidney Foundation (€ 1.250.000,-), focused on potential protective effects of potassium supplementation in CKD patients. Professor Zilla’s academic qualifications are an MD (University of Vienna), DrMed. (University of Zurich); “Habilitation” (PD;University of Vienna) and PhD (University of Cape Town). He is a registered general-, vascular- and cardiothoracic surgeon. After 3 years in basic science (University Zurich 1981-1983); he did his surgical residency at the the University Hospital Vienna (1983-1989), senior-residency at the University Hospital Zurich (1989-1990); held staff-surgeon positions in Austria and Cape Town and has been Head of the Chris Barnard Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery for the past two decades. He published >200 full papers; >40 US/PCT patents and has an H-factor of 45.

1. Clinical Aspects and Limitations of Vascular Grafts (Peter ZILLA, SA).- 2. Synthetic Materials for Vascular Scaffolds.- 3. Mechanical Testing of Vascular Grafts (Christian GRASL and Martin STOIBER, Heinz SCHIMA, AU).-  4. In vitro Testing of Engineered Vascular Grafts.- 5. In Vivo Testing and Animal Models for Vascular Grafts (Helga BERGMEISTER, AU, Bruno PODESSER, AU).- 6. Decellularized Vascular Grafts for VTE (Axel HAVERICH, Sotiris KOROSSIS, Andres HILFIKER, DE).- 7. Degradable and Non-degradable Vascular Scaffolds (Yadong WANG, William WAGNER, USA).- 8. In Vivo Vascular Tissue Engineering - Long-term Results (Beat WALPOTH, CH).- 9. Cell-Assembled Extracellular Matrix for Building Vascular Grafts (Nicolas L'HEUREUX, FR).- 10. Cell-based/Seeding of Vascular Grafts (David VORP, Justin Sol WEINBAUM, Darren G HASKETT, USA).-  11. Vascular Tissue Engineering: the role of 3-D printing (Ali KHADEMHOSSEINI, Yu Shrike ZHANG, USA).- 12. Autologous Mandril-based VTE (Joris ROTMANS, NL).- 13. The Role of Tropoelastin in VTE (Tony WEISS, AUS).- 14. Vascular Grafts made of Cell Sheets.- 15. Vascular Tissue Engineering: Pathology, Mechanisms, and Translational Implications (Carlijn BOUTEN, NL, Fred SCHOEN, USA).- 16. Models to study cardiovascular calcification relevant to tissue engineering (Elena AIKAWA, USA).-  17. The incorporation and release of bioactive molecules in Vascular Grafts (Deling KONG, CN).- 18. Functionalization/Coating of Vascular Grafts" including "cell surface interaction" (Olivier FELIX, Gero DECHER, FR, Mitsuru AKASHI, JP).- 19. Clinical application of VTE for children (Toshi SHINOKA, Christopher BREUER, USA).- 20. Bioengineered Human Acellular Vessels (Laura NIKLASON, Jeffrey H. LAWSON, USA).