Project Grant R01HL184001

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute awarded The Research Foundation For The State University of New York $740,447 on August 20, 2026, under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837) to engineer self-healing, tissue-engineered vascular grafts for use as arteriovenous shunts in hemodialysis patients.

The award funds development of self-healing tissue-engineered vessels (SH-TEVs) designed to withstand repeated needle cannulation while maintaining mechanical strength and regenerative capacity in vivo. The recipient organization, which administers research grants across the State University of New York system, will perform the work in Buffalo, New York through April 30, 2030. The project addresses an unmet clinical need: current synthetic vascular grafts such as expanded polytetrafluoroethylene often fail due to loss of mechanical integrity with repeated cannulation, and most existing tissue-engineered alternatives lack self-healing properties necessary for hemodialysis applications. The research builds on the recipient's prior development of acellular tissue-engineered vessels decorated with multidomain peptides designed to mimic activated endothelium, which demonstrated excellent patency and integration with native vasculature in animal models. The proposed work will systematically design a library of polymers and employ native biomaterials to create grafts that heal quickly following cannulation while maintaining their mechanical properties. This is a Project Grant, the standard assistance type for individual research projects under the NHLBI program.