Frontier Bio Wins 'Best Paper' at 50th Annual VESS Meeting for Revolutionary Single-Surgery Regenerative Vascular Graft

Hayward, California (March 31, 2026)

Frontier Bio, a pioneering medical technology company, today announced that research detailing its novel tissue-engineered vascular graft was awarded the prestigious Best Paper Award at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Society (VESS), one of the three premier national vascular surgery societies.

Celebrating half a century of vascular surgery's best research, the historic 2026 meeting took place during a period of record-breaking growth and abstract submissions for the society. Against this highly competitive backdrop, Frontier Bio's award-winning paper, "Bioengineered Scaffold Seeded with Adipose-derived Stem Cells for Arterial Reconstruction In a Swine Model: A Step Toward On-demand Regenerative Vascular Grafts," provided strong external validation from a leading surgeon-led community.

The work stood out in a fiercely competitive scientific program that included presentations from researchers at Stanford University and data from Humacyte's FDA-approved Symvess engineered vessel. Furthermore, the 50th Annual Meeting regularly draws research from top-tier academic medical centers like Johns Hopkins, alongside industry sponsorship and exhibitions from major vascular device companies including W.L. Gore and Medtronic.

Study Leadership

The pioneering study and manuscript were authored by lead researcher Dr. Grzegorz Jodlowski and surgical lead Dr. Jonathan Morrison. The findings were formally presented at the conference by Dr. Saman Qadri, showcasing the overarching regenerative research and development efforts led by Frontier Bio's Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Samand Pashneh-Tala.

A Breakthrough in "Single-Surgery" Tissue Engineering

Frontier Bio's research outlines a revolutionary approach to creating new blood vessels for vascular surgery. The technology utilizes a degradable polymer scaffold seeded with autologous mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) isolated directly from the patient's own fat tissue.

Unlike legacy tissue-engineering methods that require weeks or months of expensive in vitro cell and tissue culture, Frontier Bio's proprietary process is designed to be completed entirely within a single surgery. The clinical team can isolate the cells, seed the scaffold, and implant the graft in one continuous procedure. Once inside the patient, the MSCs drive the transformation of the graft into a natural blood vessel as the polymer scaffold safely degrades, leaving only healthy, natural tissue behind.

Promising First In Vivo Results

The study presented at VESS 2026 detailed the first implantation of this technology in a large animal model. Key highlights from the 14-day study include:

Successful Implantation and Acute Patency: The novel vascular graft was implanted in the carotid artery of a porcine model, maintaining excellent blood flow with no instances of acute occlusion.

Rapid Endothelialization and Tissue Remodeling: Results demonstrated robust cell invasion into the scaffold and the successful early formation of an endothelium lining the inside surface of the graft. This is a critical milestone for preventing the thrombosis and stenosis that often plague traditional synthetic grafts.

Addressing a Critical Global Health Need

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, driving a massive clinical need for reliable replacement blood vessels. Currently, surgeons must rely on either autologous grafts (veins harvested from the patient), which require invasive secondary surgeries and are often limited by availability, or synthetic grafts, which frequently fail due to infection or thrombosis.

Frontier Bio's technology aims to provide an off-the-shelf solution that performs with the efficacy and safety of a natural blood vessel. This breakthrough has broad applications across multiple high-need areas, including:

Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG)

Vascular access creation for dialysis patients

Vascular trauma repair, a critical application with significant military interest

Looking Ahead

"The results presented at VESS represent a highly promising milestone for our technology as we advance into in vivo studies," said Dr. Samand Pashneh-Tala. "Our goal is to outperform existing solutions and fundamentally change how vascular disease and trauma are treated."

"Winning Best Paper at the historic 50th anniversary of VESS is a massive validation of our single-surgery approach," added Eric Bennett, CEO of Frontier Bio. "We are currently raising funds to accelerate our path to first-in-human clinical trials and bring this transformative technology to patients."

About Frontier Bio

Founded by biomedical engineer and CEO Eric Bennett, Frontier Bio is a pioneering tissue engineering company utilizing advanced biofabrication techniques and stem cells to deliver replacement human tissues. The company's overarching mission is to eliminate the global organ transplant waitlist by creating implantable human organs, and also to replace preclinical animal testing by creating fully functional human tissues in vitro. By mastering the creation of living blood vessels for vascular grafting today, Frontier Bio is actively laying the groundwork for complex, organ-scale tissue replacement and a new era of regenerative medicine.

For more information, visit https://www.frontierbio.com

Media Contact: Frontier Bio media@frontierbio.com