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THE GRAIL

Dr De Lucrezia, one of the Scientific Coordinators of THE GRAIL

Dr Francesco Serino and Dr Davide De Lucrezia

In the photo: Dr De Lucrezia, one of the Scientific Coordinators of THE GRAIL, based at EXPLORA SRL, Italy

Research field

Regenerative Medicine

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Research Profile

Who?

“Multi-disciplinary teams are the next frontier of medical research”, says Dr Serino, surgeon and THE GRAIL principal investigator. "The project integrates our individual expertises - cardiovascular surgery and synthetic biology - to develop materials that work in vivo”, adds Dr De Lucrezia, biochemist and project coordinator.

Why?

Arterial obstruction is the cause of a wide spectrum of diseases, permanent disabilities and death. Organs such as brain (ischemic stroke), heart, kidneys, the gastrointestinal tract and the lower limbs are major targets of arteriosclerotic obstructions. Amputation is a common outcome of this pathology in diabetic patients.

What?

"THE GRAIL project's goal is to develop an innovative scaffold to treat atherosclerosis. Unlike hard stents, this soft scaffold offers an alternative treatment to mechanical re-channeling of obstructed arteries allowing vessel tissue repair. Also being bio-absorbable, it needs no further removal surgery", says Dr Serino.

How?

The scaffold is designed to host new patient cells to replace the diseased stiffened area of arteries with new regenerated tissues. Therefore, while acting as a mechanical stent, the scaffold also promotes arterial regeneration after which the scaffold is reabsorbed leaving no extraneous material in the body.

Healing, not repairing

In the Picture
In the Picture
THE GRAIL project website EXPLORA SRL homepage In Focus article 'The stent vanishes' PDF versionPDF version
Image credits

Background image: THE GRAIL

Portrait of the project coordinator: THE GRAIL

Timeline (in chronological order): 1960: National Institutes of Health; 1964: Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; 1986: Frank C. Müller, Wikimedia Commons; 2001: Kjetil Lenes, Wikimedia Commons