Everolimus-eluting ABSORB bioresorbable vascular scaffold: present and future perspectives

Bioresorbable vascular scaffolds versus everolimus-eluting metallic stents in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction: 5-year results of the BVS-EXAMINATION study

AIMS

The aim of this study was to compare five-year clinical outcomes between an everolimus-eluting bioresorbable scaffold (BRS) and an everolimus-eluting metallic stent (EES) in STEMI patients.

METHODS AND RESULTS

This observational and retrospective study included 235 consecutive STEMI patients treated with BRS, compared with 235 STEMI patients treated with EES from the EXAMINATION trial, by applying propensity score matching. The primary endpoint was a device-oriented endpoint (DOCE), including cardiac death, target vessel myocardial infarction and target lesion revascularisation at five-year follow-up. Device thrombosis, according to the ARC criteria, was also evaluated. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) analysis was also performed at five years in event-free BRS patients. The cumulative incidence of five-year DOCE was higher in the BRS group as compared to the EES group (13.2% vs 7.6%, HR 1.87, 95% CI: 0.94-3.44, p=0.071), mainly driven by a higher rate of TLR (7.6% vs 1.7%, HR 1.15, 95% CI: 0.44-2.30, p=0.004). The five-year definite BRS thrombosis rate was also higher as compared to EES (4.2% vs 1.2%, HR 3.49, 95% CI: 0.95-12.82, p=0.054). OCT analysis showed a high incidence of neoatherosclerosis in the BRS group.

CONCLUSIONS

The five-year event risk was higher with BRS versus EES in STEMI. This suggests that the probability of obtaining favourable results at very long-term follow-up is low. Whether better results will be obtained with new-generation BVS remains to be determined.

Autophagy in Vascular Disease

Autophagy is a reparative, life-sustaining process by which cytoplasmic components are sequestered in double-membrane vesicles and degraded on fusion with lysosomal compartments. Growing evidence reveals that basal autophagy is an essential in vivo process mediating proper vascular function. Moreover, autophagy is stimulated by many stress-related stimuli in the arterial wall to protect endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells against cell death and the initiation of vascular disease, in particular atherosclerosis. Basal autophagy is atheroprotective during early atherosclerosis but becomes dysfunctional in advanced atherosclerotic plaques. Little is known about autophagy in other vascular disorders, such as aneurysm formation, arterial aging, vascular stiffness, and chronic venous disease, even though autophagy is often impaired. This finding highlights the need for pharmacological interventions with compounds that stimulate the prosurvival effects of autophagy in the vasculature. A large number of animal studies and clinical trials have indicated that oral or stent-based delivery of the autophagy inducer rapamycin or derivatives thereof, collectively known as rapalogs, effectively inhibit the basic mechanisms that control growth and destabilization of atherosclerotic plaques. Other autophagy-inducing drugs, such as spermidine or add-on therapy with widely used antiatherogenic compounds, including statins and metformin, are potentially useful to prevent vascular disease with minimal adverse effects.

Polymers for Cardiovascular Stent Coatings

Polymers have found widespread applications in cardiology, in particular in coronary vascular intervention as stent platforms (scaffolds) and coating matrices for drug-eluting stents. Apart from permanent polymers, current research is focussing on biodegradable polymers. Since they degrade once their function is fulfilled, their use might contribute to the reduction of adverse events like in-stent restenosis, late stent-thrombosis, and hypersensitivity reactions. After reviewing current literature concerning polymers used for cardiovascular applications, this review deals with parameters of tissue and blood cell functions which should be considered to evaluate biocompatibility of stent polymers in order to enhance physiological appropriate properties. The properties of the substrate on which vascular cells are placed can have a large impact on cell morphology, differentiation, motility, and fate. Finally, methods to assess these parameters under physiological conditions will be summarized.

Endothelial responses of magnesium and other alloying elements in magnesium-based stent materials

Biodegradable tailored magnesium (Mg) alloys are some of the most promising scaffolds for cardiovascular stents. During the course of degradation after implantation, all the alloying elements in the scaffold will be released to the surrounding vascular tissues. However, fundamental questions regarding the toxicity of alloying elements towards vascular cells, the maximum amount of each element that could be used in alloy design, or how each of the alloying elements affects vascular cellular activity and gene expression, are still not fully answered. This work systematically addressed these questions by revealing how application of different alloying elements commonly used in Mg stent materials influences several indices of human endothelial cell health, i.e., viability, proliferations, cytoskeletal reorganizations, migration, and the gene expression profile. The overall cell viability and proliferation showed a decreasing trend with increasing concentrations of the ions, and the half maximal effective concentrations (EC50) for each element were determined. When applied at a low concentration of around 10 mM, Mg had no adverse effects but improved cell proliferation and migration instead. Mg ions also altered endothelial gene expression significantly in a dose dependent manner. Most of the changed genes are related to angiogenesis and the cell adhesion signaling pathways. Findings from this work provide useful information on maximum safe doses of these ions for endothelial cells, endothelial responses towards these metal ions, and some guidance for future Mg stent design.

Vascular restoration therapy and bioresorbable vascular scaffold

This article describes the evolution of minimally invasive intervention technologies for vascular restoration therapy from early-stage balloon angioplasty in 1970s, metallic bare metal stent and metallic drug-eluting stent technologies in 1990s and 2000s, to bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS) technology in large-scale development in recent years. The history, the current stage, the challenges and the future of BVS development are discussed in detail as the best available approach for vascular restoration therapy. The criteria of materials selection, design and processing principles of BVS, and the corresponding clinical trial results are also summarized in this article.

Automatic detection of bioresorbable vascular scaffold struts in intravascular optical coherence tomography pullback runs

Bioresorbable vascular scaffolds (BVS) have gained significant interest in both the technical and clinical communities as a possible alternative to metallic stents. For accurate BVS analysis, intravascular optical coherence tomography (IVOCT) is currently the most suitable imaging technique due to its high resolution and the translucency of polymeric BVS struts for near infrared light. However, given the large number of struts in an IVOCT pullback run, quantitative analysis is only feasible when struts are detected automatically. In this paper, we present an automated method to detect and measure BVS struts based on their black cores in IVOCT images. Validated using 3 baseline and 3 follow-up data sets, the method detected 93.7% of 4691 BVS struts correctly with 1.8% false positives. In total, the Dice's coefficient for BVS strut areas was 0.84. It concludes that this method can detect BVS struts accurately and robustly for tissue coverage measurement, malapposition detection, strut distribution analysis or 3D scaffold reconstruction.

Endothelialization of novel magnesium-rare earth alloys with fluoride and collagen coating

Magnesium (Mg) alloys are promising scaffolds for the next generation of cardiovascular stents because of their better biocompatibility and biodegradation compared to traditional metals. However, insufficient mechanical strength and high degradation rate are still the two main limitations for Mg materials. Hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatment and collagen coating were used in this research to improve the endothelialization of two rare earth-based Mg alloys. Results demonstrated that a nanoporous film structure of fluoride with thickness of ~20 μm was formed on the Mg material surface, which improved the corrosion resistance. Primary human coronary artery endothelial cells (HCAECs) had much better attachment, spreading, growth and proliferation (the process of endothelialization) on HF-treated Mg materials compared to bare- or collagen-coated ones.

mTOR inhibition: a promising strategy for stabilization of atherosclerotic plaques

Statins are currently able to stabilize atherosclerotic plaques by lowering plasma cholesterol and pleiotropic effects, but a residual risk for atherosclerotic disease remains. Therefore, effective prevention of atherosclerosis and treatment of its complications is still a major clinical challenge. A large body of evidence indicates that mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors such as rapamycin or everolimus have pleiotropic anti-atherosclerotic effects so that these drugs can be used as add-on therapy to prevent or delay the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Moreover, bioresorbable scaffolds eluting everolimus trigger a healing process in the vessel wall, both in pigs and humans, that results in late lumen enlargement and plaque regression. At present, this phenomenon of atheroregression is poorly understood. However, given that mTOR inhibitors suppress cell proliferation and trigger autophagy, a cellular survival pathway and a process linked to cholesterol efflux, we hypothesize that these compounds can inhibit (or reverse) the basic mechanisms that control plaque growth and destabilization. Unfortunately, adverse effects associated with mTOR inhibitors such as dyslipidemia and hyperglycemia have recently been identified. Dyslipidemia is manageable via statin treatment, while the anti-diabetic drug metformin would prevent hyperglycemia. Because metformin has beneficial macrovascular effects, this drug in combination with an mTOR inhibitor might have significant promise to treat patients with unstable plaques. Moreover, both statins and metformin are known to inhibit mTOR via AMPK activation so that they would fully exploit the beneficial effects of mTOR inhibition in atherosclerosis.