Research Support
SPIRITS

Development of humanized cardiovascular xenograft tissues for medical application using iPS cell technology

Project Gist

Developing next-generation medical products for cardiovascular surgery utilizing iPS cell technology.

Keywords

Cardiovascular Surgery, Decellularized tissue, iPS cell

Background and Purpose

Cardiovascular diseases are increasing so far. Although decellularized human vessels and heart valves are expected to be excellent medical products, the availability is limited. Decellularized animal-derived xenogeneic tissues with similar size to human are expected to overcome the problem. Furthermore, human iPS cell technology enabled us to obtain much number of human vascular cells such as vascular endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells. “Humanized cardiovascular tissues” prepared before implantation using human iPS cells would be anticipated.

Project Achievements

Through a collaboration with Hannover Medical School (Germany) who has been developing commercially-available human decellularized aortic and pulmonary valves, we could establish fundamental technologies to prepare “humanized vessels” yielded through SPIRITS (decellularization of bovine vessels / implantation of decellularized vessels to a porcine model / efficient and robust differentiation technology from human iPS cells).

Future Prospects

We will expand the research achievement through SPIRITS toward the establishment of basic technologies for “humanized heart valves” powered by the international collaborative research team yielded by the SPIRITS.

Figure

Overview of the project.
Implantation of bovine decellularized vessel to porcine carotid artery (arrow)

Joint Research/Academic Institutions Abroad

Hannover Medical School

Principal Investigator

MINATOYA Kenji

・MINATOYA Kenji
・Graduate School of Medicine
・Prof. Minatoya has been working as a cardiovascular surgeon (especially aortic surgery) in domestic and foreign institutes. In Kyoto University, Prof. Minatoya is also working on the preparation of clinical study for cardiac regenerative therapy using human iPS cells with Assistant Prof. Hidetoshi Masumoto.
・URL:http://kyoto-cvs.jp/