Publications

A new study from the Coronary Stent-in-a-Box and -on-a-Chip initiative has shown that it’s possible to test coronary stents in cultured arteries using ethically sourced tissue—without relying on live animal models. The research team used LifeTec Group’s VAscular BIOreactor (VABIO) to simulate realistic conditions for stent deployment in coronary arteries taken from slaughterhouse pig hearts.

The Osteochondral platform contributed to another research paper, where an ex vivo culture system was designed to both quantify and visualize bone formation and resorption within osteochondral explants, a unique set-up since this is currently challenging with existing analysis techniques.

The cardioprotective perfusion protocol introduced in this study, explored with the PhysioHeart platform, showed enhanced myocardial function during ex situ heart perfusion compared to previous methods used in our lab. The improved perfusion protocol now provides a high yield PhysioHeart platform, making it an even more reliable and accessible tool for research in cardiac interventions.

A research paper regarding the BioLiver platform investigates the feasibility of utilising livers obtained from slaughterhouses as a potential substitute for laboratory pig livers. Additionally, the influence of various stunning methods on the overall quality and viability of these livers is examined.

This paper presents the development of the MarioHeart in-vitro model by Eindhoven University of Technology and the University Medical Center Utrecht, in collaboration with LifeTec Group, which enables the testing of thrombogenicity of mechanical heart valve prostheses and potential anticoagulant therapies through its unique design and realistic flow simulation.

Our Cardiac BioSimulator has once again played an important role in a recent publication. This publication outlines an ex-vivo cardiac study conducted to examine the feasibility of intravalvular impedance (IVI) sensing for monitoring heart valve prostheses after implantation, specifically when the sensorized valve is surrounded by biological tissue.

We are proud to share that our PhysioHeart™ platform contributed to a scientific publication about the validation of slaughterhouse hearts for ex-situ heart perfusion studies, within the scope of the RegMedXD project.

A research paper about the BioLiver platform was published, which demonstrated the viability and functionality of using an ex vivo liver perfusion platform to assess hepatic metabolism and liver damage caused by drugs or medical devices, providing a pre-clinical model to reduce and refine animal testing.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology's Photoacoustics & Ultrasound Laboratory have developed an imaging technique that combines multiple ultrasound probes to improve image quality and field of view for cardiac disease assessment, which was demonstrated using the PhysioHeart platform at LifeTec Group.

Researchers have used the PhysioHeart platform to investigate the effect of intracoronary cooling on reperfusion injury following acute myocardial infarction, and found that intracoronary cooling resulted in less tissue damage before the reopening of the coronary artery.

LifeTec Group contributed to a comprehensive review on the role of biomedical engineering in the development of minimally invasive cardiac surgery techniques, with the goal of facilitating a bridge between biomedical engineering and clinical applications.

A team from the University of Cambridge and LifeTec collaborated on the development of a REshapeable Mitral Annuloplasty DevIce (REMADI) that allows for peri-operative adjustment during the implantation procedure and post-operatively, which was tested in LifeTec's Cardiac BioSimulator platform and reported in ASME's Journal of Medical Devices.

We are proud to report on the publication of a research paper on Cartilage Tissue Regeneration using Hydrogel.

CardiacBooster and LifeTec Group collaborated on a study using the PhysioHeart platform to investigate the performance of a prototype ventricular assist balloon, and early results showed significant improvements in cardiac output and coronary flow.

In vitro functional liver tissue engineering for drug testing or transplantation can be achieved using the cellulose nanofibril hydrogel as a scaffold, which shows promising mechanical and chemical properties compared to the animal-derived Matrigel and can potentially be used in clinical applications.

The study aimed to evaluate real-time visualization of lesion progression during intra-atrial ablation using photoacoustic (PA) imaging, and the results show promising findings that this technology may be applicable in clinical trials in the near future.

This paper reports on a study conducted by LifeTec Group investigating the physiology of their PhysioHeart platform, which is used for cardiovascular device and therapy assessment, with the aim of identifying ideas to further improve the platform and keep the isolated hearts in a better condition for a longer timespan.

The study explores the use of a newly developed bioreactor to culture fibroblast spheroids inside nanocellulose hydrogels, and finds that degradation in combination with flow leads to more effective tissue production in cellulose nanofibril hydrogels, which is a very potent scaffold material for tissue engineering.

We developed an ex vivo vascular bioreactor that allows for long-term culture of native blood vessels under physiologically relevant conditions, with pulsatile hemodynamics, shear stress, longitudinal pre-stretch, and ultrasound imaging, and demonstrated its potential for testing vascular therapies and devices.

Rose Bengal (RB) is a versatile photosensitizer with increasing biomedical research interest due to its various applications such as in photodynamic therapy, cancer treatment, and antimicrobial therapy, and its low price and availability.

This study aimed to validate the reliability of optical-based three-dimensional digital image correlation for dynamic full-field analysis of epicardial strain, which was successfully accomplished with high repeatability and resolution and can be used as a reference for the validation of clinical cardiac strain imaging modalities.

The study developed a three-layered silk fibroin/polyurethane vascular graft through electrospinning as a potential alternative for long-term haemodialysis vascular access, with properties that match the success factors of both synthetic grafts and native arteriovenous fistulae, providing early cannulation potential, degradability, non-haemolytic character, long clotting time, and favourable adhesion of human umbilical vein endothelial cells with increased viability after 3 and 7 days.

A biosimulator was developed to train surgeons in off-pump transventricular mitral valve repairs using extruded polytetrafluoroethylene artificial chordae implanted into flailing mitral leaflets under echocardiographic navigation, with the beating heart biosimulator providing an ideal platform for training on transcatheter and beating heart procedures.

A preannealed Silk Elastin-Like co-Recombinamer hydrogel has been developed and optimized, which shows improved mechanical properties and successful regeneration of hyaline cartilage in an ex vivo model, making it a promising injectable scaffold in the field of cartilage regeneration.

The study presents a novel ex vivo osteochondral culture platform consisting of separated media compartments for cartilage and bone, enabling long-term culture of osteochondral biopsies under controlled conditions, which can be used as a predictive platform suitable for preclinical assessment of cartilage repair strategies in critical size defects and can reduce the need for animal experiments.

The LASER project focuses on using laser therapy to treat twin-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS) by coagulating the placental anastomoses that cause one twin to receive too much blood while the other receives too little, with the project aiming to assess the impact of laser power and firing angle on the coagulation efficiency for closing placental anastomoses.

The paper describes a pilot study that evaluated the accuracy of using cardiac MR velocity mapping to quantify aortic regurgitation in the presence of a transcatheter heart valve in a porcine model, and determined the best anatomic level to obtain the most accurate results.

The goal of this work was to demonstrate a proof of concept method for detecting cardiac pathologies by using a population of math models (ePoM) calibrated to experimental data, allowing for an earlier detection of pathology and accounting for physiological variability.

Real-time biochemical assessment and decompression of lymph may contribute to the understanding of heart failure and eventually result in preventive measures.