Professor Geoff Moggridge

Clinical replacement heart valves are imperfect. They are either:

• mechanical, which increase the risk of blood clots and necessitate the use of blood-thinning medication, or
• made of pig or cow pericardium, which have limited life span.

Polymeric heart valves offer an attractive alternative to these. However, most polymers are isotropic - this means that their properties, for example strength and stretchiness, are the same in all directions. This is in marked contrast to natural heart valve tissue, which is highly anisotropic, including fibrous reinforcement of a flexible matrix.

We use controlled processing of a self-assembling polymer to mimic the fibrous reinforced structure of healthy natural soft tissue to produce a durable heart valve with excellent blood compatibility. Pilot lab work carried out by our group has established the feasibility of using the proposed materials to make innovative heart valve prototypes that have been tested in vitro. Our current research aims to prove the efficiency and reliability of our prototype, an essential requirement of the stringent regulatory approval process.