Cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of death worldwide and, coronary artery bypass is the most common intervention in this area. With the aim of creating an alternative to the cardiovascular stent, the UIC Barcelona research group led by Román Pérez, director of BIT, has developed an artificial blood vessel with an internal type I collagen structure that helps our cells to stick together, and to grow and divide, and an external alginate structure that protects the vessel from disintegration.

Evaluation of the synthetic artery’s resistance to pressure is ongoing, and the researchers are confident that in the future, they will even be able to create a personalised blood vessel with the patient’s own cells and circulate the drugs needed for treatment through this artery. This would allow their interaction in vitro to be observed, and later, extrapolate the results to what could happen in vivo.

Thus, in addition to being used in coronary surgeries, the collagen artery could also be used to evaluate drugs in in vivo studies and would be an alternative model to animal experimentation in the laboratory.