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REVIEW article

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1533421
This article is part of the Research Topic Bioengineering and Biotechnology Approaches in Cardiovascular Sciences, Volume III View all articles

A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF HEART VALVE PROSTHESES TO OFFER PERSPECTIVES OF THEIR LIMITATIONS

Provisionally accepted
Ana Luiza Pires Resende Ana Luiza Pires Resende 1Raquel Ahnert Aguiar Evangelista Raquel Ahnert Aguiar Evangelista 2Breno Valentim Nogueira Breno Valentim Nogueira 1,2,3*
  • 1 Graduate Program in Biotechnology, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil
  • 2 Graduate Program in Biotechnology of Rede Nordeste de Biotecnologia (RENORBIO), Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), Vitória, Brazil
  • 3 Tissue Engineering Core, Department of Morphology, Health Sciences Center, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Prosthetic heart valves (PHV) have been studied for around 70 years. They are the best alternative to save the life of patients with cardiac valve diseases. However, current PHVs may still cause significant disadvantages to patients. In general, native heart valves show complex structures and reproducing their functions challenges scientists.Valve repair and replacement are the options to heal heart valve diseases (VHDs), such as stenosis and regurgitation, which show high morbidity and mortality worldwide.Valve repair contributes to the performance of cardiac cycles. However, it fails to restore valve anatomy to its normal condition. On the other hand, replacement is the only alternative to treat valve degeneration. It may do so by mechanical or bioprosthetic valves. Although prostheses may restructure patients' cardiac cycle, both prostheses may show limitations and potential disadvantages, such as mechanical valves causing thrombogenicity or bioprosthetic valves, calcification. Thus, prostheses require constant improvements to remedy these limitations. Although the design of mechanical valve structures has improved, their raw materials cause great disadvantages, and alternatives for this problem remain scarce. Cardiac valve tissue engineering emerged 30 years ago and has improved over time, e.g., xenografts and fabricated heart valves serving as scaffolds for cell seeding. Thus, this review describes cardiac valve substitutes, starting with the history of valvular prosthesis transplants and 1 ending with some perspectives to alleviate the limitations of artificial valves.

    Keywords: Heart Valve Diseases, valve repair, Valve replacement, Mechanical valves, bioprosthetic valves, Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering

    Received: 23 Nov 2024; Accepted: 23 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Resende, Evangelista and Nogueira. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Breno Valentim Nogueira, Tissue Engineering Core, Department of Morphology, Health Sciences Center, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.