New Treatment for Stents to Improve Compatibility

New technology involving the capture of circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) is designed to improve blood compatibility and the biocompatibility of cardiac stents and vascular grafts.

This EPC capture technology involves the immobilization of antibodies that capture EPCs onto the surface of blood-contacting devices. Laboratory results of antibody-treated stainless steel and expanded polytetrafluorethylene surfaces were shown to exhibit an increased rate and quantity of EPC binding, compared to untreated controls. At 48 hours, treated stainless steel coronary R stents, from Orbus Medical Technologies (Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA) showed a confluent monolayer of endothelium exhibiting a distinctive "cobble-stone-like” appearance, in contrast to untreated controls showing evidence of thrombus and disorganized fibrin matrix. Early results of porcine coronary implants treated with immobilized antibodies directed toward EPCs revealed a marked reduction of organized thrombus and neointimal thickening of blood vessels when compared to untreated stainless steel stents.

The EPC capture technology was developed by a group headed by Michael Kutryk, M.D., Ph.D., an interventional cardiologist at St. Michael's Hospital (Canada), in collaboration with Orbus.

"The EPC capture technology approach recognizes that the body's healing response to foreign materials is so complicated that it may be best to engineer an accelerated natural solution,” said Professor Patrick W. Serruys, M.D., chief of cardiology at Erasmus University Medical Center (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), who reported on the research at a technology meeting in Marseilles (France) in January 2003.





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