The Russian Science Foundation (RSF) has awarded sponsorship under the grant competition to two projects of Tomsk Polytechnic University scientists. With the support of the foundation, the scientists will develop artificial blood vessels by a new method and synthesize new compounds of chlorine, bromine and iodine. The equipment of Centres for Collective Use in St. Petersburg will be used for experimental and practical parts of the research.
The projects received grants in the RSF competition: Research Based on the Existing World-Class Research Infrastructure. The competition is particularly intended to support conducting research in large-scale facilities of the scientific infrastructure of Russia, including the research centres of a home university and other organizations.
The foundation supported the project of the TPU research team under the supervision of Mekhman Yusubov, Professor and TPU Vice-Rector for Research. It is large-scale fundamental research aimed to obtain new compounds of iodine, chlorine and bromine. In the long run, the research findings will help to create new environmentally-friendly catalysts, promising materials and radiopharmaceuticals for positron emission tomography (a method of internal body examination).
The experiments will be conducted using the equipment of the Research Park at St. Petersburg University (SPbU).
“The research requires world-class facilities and all the necessary equipment is available at the SPbU Research Park. This project is another milestone in the cooperation of SPbU and TPU chemists. It should be reminded that, currently, we are collaborating to create a network laboratory of X-ray crystallography to study non-covalent interactions in molecules. It is a new research area for Tomsk,” Mekhman Yusubov notes.
With the sponsorship of the foundation, the research team under the supervision of Evgeniy Bolbasov, a research fellow of the TPU Laboratory for Plasma Hybrid Systems, will develop a technology to obtain artificial vessels from biodegradable polymers using a multi-jet electrospinning method.
Basically, the electrospinning method implies drawing superfine threads of polymer solutions under an electric field. The multi-jet electrospinning allows for inputting different polymers through independent channels and creating a composition of several polymers, which can not be achieved by other methods. This method has never been used before to create artificial vessels. We have to develop the technology and conduct the research on the developed materials. We expect that the multi-jet electrospinning will allow creating blood vessels mimicking the structure of natural vessels as accurately as possible, which is crucially important in the development of this kind of implants,” Evgeniy Bolbasov says.
Biological preclinical studies of the developed vessels will be conducted at the Preclinical and Translational Research Centre of the Almazov National Medical Research Centre of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation in St. Petersburg.
The Almazov National Medical Research Centre is a Russian leading centre, suitable to conduct a full range of biological tests, from the study of how artificial materials interact with cells to full-scale studies in experimental animals. It is obvious, that just a few technical universities have the similar infrastructure, which allows conducting such research work at a high level. However, the research is essential for further development of new medical materials,” the scientist says.
As noted by the TPU Scientific and Technological Programs Office, both projects received funding worth 6 million rubles per year until 2024 with an opportunity for extension.