H&E Histology
Our close collaborator Prof. Jeremy Goldman from the Biomedical Engineering program has been awarded with the NIH R15 grant entitled Inhibition of Neointimal Hyperplasia by Zinc-based Biodegradable Arterial Devices. This two-year project, to which Prof. Jaroslaw Drelich serves as Co-PI, will allow us to correlate a range of zinc and zinc alloy corrosion rates with the degree of suppressed intimal hyplerplasia. We hypothesize that a corrosion rate that is too low will preserve mechanical strength of the metal but not effectively suppress intimal hyperplasia, while a rate that is too high will prematurely degrade the mechanical scaffold and simultaneously produce toxic effects that provoke harmful inflammatory responses and ultimately exacerbate intimal hyperplasia. Under this project, we will also progress our efforts in engineering of implant surfaces by controlling the surface oxide film thickness and its quality.
