The Poly-Valve (Polymeric Prosthetic Heart Valve for Life)

The Poly-Valve (Polymeric Prosthetic Heart Valve for Life) is an Interreg project built around a collaboration between 5 partners and supported by the EU funds.

Cardiovascular diseases account for 3 of the 4 leading causes of death in the world. The economic cost of these diseases was estimated to be $424 billion and accounted for 41 % of all deaths in the US alone in 2009. Drug therapies are often palliative and do not treat the underlying cause. Among cardiovascular diseases, valvular heart diseases (VHD) affect about 3% of the population over 65 years, and up to 13% above 75 years. The only available treatment is heart valve replacement either with mechanical or biological prostheses, depending on patient age or clinical condition. On the one hand, mechanical prostheses provide an extremely long-term durability but at the same time bear a high risk of thromboembolic complications, which makes a permanent anticoagulation therapy necessary. On the other hand, biological prostheses, made of porcine valve or of bovine pericardium, provide better biocompatibility without anticoagulation but they are prone to degeneration, which necessitates re-operations.

To overcome these problems, polymeric and especially polyurethane materials were investigated as potential heart valve materials. However, they have not been introduced into the clinic yet, due to durability and biocompatibility problems. In the course of the Poly-Valve project, a polyurethane (PU) has been bulk modified to improve the durability and biocompatibility in order to meet the medical criteria of a heart valve prosthesis. As a result, a lifelong, tailor-made, cost effective, environmentally friendly and easy to manufacture prosthetic heart valve made of medical grade polyurethane will be created, representing an alternative treatment for VHD patients.

Our research has been focused on the selection of the best PU by the use of sophisticated and validated assays, including in silico modeling of valve design, in vitro hydrodynamic testing, ex vivo experiments with porcine and human blood in established heart models, as well as in vivo preclinical testing in sheep.

Partners of the project

• University of Liege: GIGA Cardiovascular Sciences
• Sirris
• University Hospital Aachen: Department of Cardiovascular Engineering
• University of Maastricht: Department of Biochemistry
• University of Hasselt: Limburg Clinical Research Program

News of the project

• Blood-compatibility testing of the polymer