“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.

"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.