Fig. 1

Experimental setup. For seeding, the vascular graft (c) was placed in the graft-containing portion (b) R2.6 which is connected to the three-way stopcocks via one connecting tube (e). The bioreactor (a), was rotated vertically to expel air bubbles. Seeding was performed in two rounds: in the first four (I) both hECPC and hMSC were supplied and in the second four rounds (II) only hEPC were supplied. The bioreactor was rotated 90° and medium was drawn into a tuberculin syringe to supervise cell culture parameters after each seeding round (A, B). After static seeding, the graft-containing bioreactor chamber (a) was attached to the perfusion circuit that consists of the medium-filled reservoir (f), peristaltic pump (g), the oxygenator (h) and the bubbletrap (i) (C, D). All the inflow passes from the reservoir via the oxygenator, bubbletrap, and the tubing through the recellularized graft back into the reservoir. The arrows depict the direction of the flow