The development of vascular grafts requires the matching of material and viscoelastic properties to those of native artery. The hypothesis of this study was to subject electrospun tissue engineering scaffolds composed of polydioxanone, elastin, and collagen to cyclic loading in order to quantify the hysteretic properties, uniaxial tensile mechanical properties of conditioned scaffolds, and stress relaxation properties over a period of 400 cycles when compared to ePTFE, one of the most popular vascular prosthetic materials, and decellularized pig artery. In the electrospun graft, polydioxanone would provide a mechanical backbone, providing tensile support and preventing vessel rupture; while the elastin would provide elasticity and collagen would provide bioactivity (promote regeneration in vitro/in situ).
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