Grant: Project Grant

Coronary artery disease is the major cause of death in the world. Most of these patients undergo artery angioplasty and stenting to avoid open heart surgery. Bare metal and pharmacological stents have been in the market for quite some time. Though effective currently available stents are facing serious stent based long term complications such as restenosis and late stent thrombosis. To address these problems, here we propose to design a new baculovirus carrying drug eluting stent. This new stent will promote accelerated healing of injured vascular tissues to prevent stent related complications. Both in vitro and experiments on animal model will be performed to investigate novel stent design, mechanism of action, safety and their preclinical efficacy. This study will advance stent design knowledge and has potential to result in a next generation of stent for use in coronary artery disease.