Improving Biocompatibility of Polyester Fabrics through Polyurethane/Gelatin Complex Coating for Potential Vascular Application

Medical apparatus and instruments, such as vascular grafts, are first exposed to blood when they are implanted. Therefore, blood compatibility is considered to be the critical issue when constructing a vascular graft. In this regard, the coating method is verified to be an effective and simple approach to improve the blood compatibility as well as prevent the grafts from blood leakage. In this study, polyester fabric is chosen as the substrate to provide excellent mechanical properties while a coating layer of polyurethane is introduced to prevent the blood leakage. Furthermore, gelatin is coated on the substrate to mimic the native extracellular matrix together with the improvement of biocompatibility. XPS and FTIR analysis are performed for elemental and group analysis to determine the successful coating of polyurethane and gelatin on the polyester fabrics. In terms of blood compatibility, hemolysis and platelet adhesion are measured to investigate the anticoagulation performance. In vitro cell experiments also indicate that endothelial cells show good proliferation and morphology on the polyester fabric modified with such coating layers. Taken together, such polyester fabric coated with polyurethane and gelatin layers would have a promising potential in constructing vascular grafts with expected blood compatibility and biocompatibility without destroying the basic mechanical requirements for vascular applications.