This technology is a platform to preserve, rehabilitate, and store living heart valves for the off-the-shelf availability of a heart valve replacement capable of growth and self-repair, thereby overcoming the current standard of multiple reoperations and reinterventions
Current methods to treat valve disease include mechanical and bioprosthetic valves. As these prostheses are not composed of living, growth-capable tissue, they inevitably fail due to calcific and non-calcific SVD, increasing the patient’s risk of morbidity and mortality. There is an urgent clinical need for a valve replacement capable of growth and self-repair, which can obviate the current clinical standard of multiple open-heart surgeries throughout a patient’s lifetime to repair or replace structurally degraded valve prostheses.
This technology enables the long-term ex vivo preservation of living allogenic valves for heart valve transplantation. A valvular bioreactor will individually house the procured allografts in a heart valve preservation solution. The bioreactor’s compact, pumpless design facilitates clinical translation, reduces the risk of cross-contamination, and allows for individual removal and inspection of valvular allografts. Throughout storage, the allografts are rehabilitated with biological and immunomodulatory agents to improve their viability, durability, growth potential, and overall performance. Long-term storage of many valve allografts will generate a “living biobank” in which valve allografts will be available “off-the-shelf” in a variety of sizes for rapid availability at the time of surgery. As such, this technology has the potential to change the paradigm of heart valve replacements in children (growth) and adults (self-repair which prevents structural valve degeneration).
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Ph.D.
IR CU23223
Licensing Contact: Kristin Neuman