European Doctoral Academy in Regenerative Engineering Marie Curie Initial Training Network TECAS: Tissue Engineering Solutions for Cardiovascular Surgery Development of a decellularised pericardium percutaneous heart valve (ESR7)

Overview
The TECAS Initial Training Network (TECAS-ITN) integrates the major European investigators and experts in the field of cardiovascular tissue engineering (TE) and regenerative medicine (RM), with a view to establishing a European Doctorate Training Programme in Regenerative Medicine. The aim of the Programme is to facilitate the cross-disciplinary and intersectorial training of Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in the field, by consolidating the extensive multidisciplinary experience in training and research of its academic, clinical and industrial Partners. The TECAS-ITN focuses on the clinical needs of cardiac valve replacement/repair, myocardium reconstruction and patch graft angioplasty of the great blood vessels, with a view to developing the underpinning expertise and technology for manufacturing cardiovascular TE implants for clinical use. The TECAS-ITN will host 13 ESR Fellows at 6 different Partner Institutions, each performing an individual research project that is placed along the innovation pipeline of a number of TE products/technologies from basic science to translational research. The training of the ESR Fellows will be supervised by a consortium of 5 academic/clinical, 2 industrial and 1 regulatory agency Partners with wide expertise in basic science, clinical research, translation and standardisation of TE technologies, and will be complemented by 2 project-specific Exchange secondments to other TECAS-ITN Partners collaborating on a specific Fellowship, 1 Clinical secondment to a tissue/organ bank of the clinical Partners, 1 Industrial secondment to an industrial Partner and 1 Laboratory secondment to an academic institution outside TECAS-ITN, as well as through an extensive curriculum of academic and transferable skills courses.

Summary:
This ESR Fellowship opening covers a 3‐yearresearch position (resulting in a PhD degree) at University of Padua, Padua, Italy. The main part will be carried out at the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Description:
The aim of this Fellowship is to develop a percutaneous heart valve (PHV), using decellularised porcine or bovine pericardium, which can be delivered to the patient either unseeded, or seeded with the patient’s own cells in vitro and conditioned in a bioreactor prior to implantation. The work will initially focus on the development of a collapsible stent, which can be compressed to a small enough diameter, in order to be inserted into a vein, and then expanded to its final diameter at the required valve position. Pericardia will be decellularised according to previously established protocols, and will be assessed against native pericardium in terms of histology, biochemistry, cytotoxicity and biomechanics. The durability and calcification potential of the scaffolds will be assessed in other ESR projects within TECAS‐ITN. Trileaflet PHVs will be manufactured by mounting the pericardial scaffolds to the developed stents, and their function will be assessed hydrodynamically. PHVs will be seeded statically with stem cells to identify the most favourable seeding conditions, and optimally‐ seeded PHVs will be conditioned in a bioreactor under different conditions to optimise valve regeneration. Statically‐seeded and conditioned PHVs will be assessed in terms of cell phenotype, structural/biomechanical integrity and neo‐matrix synthesisto assessthe effect of conditioning on valve regeneration.

Research Field: Cardiovascular tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

Keywords: Heart valves, decellularised scaffolds, pericardium, percutaneous valve,stemcells, bioreactors

Collaborators: Hannover Medical School, RWTH Aachen University and Hospital, University of Patras, Eindhoven University of Technology

Supervision: Prof. Gino Gerosa (PI), Dr. Filippo Naso (co‐I), Dr. Laura Iop (co‐I), Dr. Sotirios Korossis (co‐I), Prof. Stefan Jockenhövel (co‐I), Prof.Demosthenes Mavrilas(co‐I), Prof. Frank Baaijens(co‐I)

Person Specification

Required Degree: Master’s Degree (or equivalent) in Biology, Biochemistry, Biomedical Engineering or Medicine (or related subject)

Required Languages: English (Excellent)

Eligibility: The Fellowship is open to international candidates, who at the time of recruitment have less than 4 years research experience (full-time equivalent) following completion of their Master’s Degree (or equivalent), and have not yet been awarded a doctoral degree. Eligible candidates must also not have resided or carried their main activity in Italy for more than 12 months since October 2010.