Coatings and surface treatment


Foreign body response (FBR) is an unavoidable process as it takes place whenever any material becomes implanted into the body. The process of implantation injures the tissue around the foreign object, which triggers an inflammatory response that can last for the duration of the implant’s lifecycle. In most cases the response is manageable, but researchers are still searching for ways to reduce it so there’s less chance of implant failure. Mae Losasso speaks to Omid Veiseh, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, and Dr Damiano Barone, clinical lecturer in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge, to learn how they’re trying to overcome FBR in their own research.


A calming I


n 1954, cardiovascular surgeon Dr Michael DeBakey successfully implanted the first prosthetic graft into a patient with weakened arteries. The novel graft was made from the widely available synthetic material called Dacron, which DeBakey had stumbled across almost by chance in his local department store. “He wanted to develop an artificial heart and he knew that vascular grafts were needed to create this connection,” explains Omid Veiseh, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University. “He was looking for different materials that he could use and he was


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inspired by what he was finding in the fabric stores. He was literally sewing [the Dacron] together and trying it out on patients.” As Veiseh says, “There was an urgent need for patients and people had to come up with something… The field wasn’t as systematic or as structured as it is today.”


DeBakey got lucky: through iterative testing, and a dose of serendipity, he was able to discover a material that didn’t provoke an immune reaction in the body. But this is not the case with all implantable medical devices (IMDs). “For all the really exciting


Medical Device Developments / www.nsmedicaldevices.com


influence


Taves/ Shutterstock.com


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