About the Authors

Tetsuya Ishizawa

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Writing – original draft

ishizawa1028@med.id.yamagata-u.ac.jp (TI); namakino@med.id.yamagata-u.ac.jp (NM)

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Department of Gastroenterology, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan

Naohiko Makino

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision

ishizawa1028@med.id.yamagata-u.ac.jp (TI); namakino@med.id.yamagata-u.ac.jp (NM)

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Department of Gastroenterology, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan

Yasuharu Kakizaki

Roles Investigation

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Department of Gastroenterology, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan

Akiko Matsuda

Roles Investigation

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Department of Gastroenterology, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan

Yoshihide Toyokawa

Roles Resources

Affiliation Piolax Medical Devices, Inc., Kanagawa, Japan

Shun Ooyama

Roles Resources

Affiliation Piolax Medical Devices, Inc., Kanagawa, Japan

Masaru Tanaka

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Resources, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Frontier Center for Organic Materials, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan, Soft Materials Chemistry, Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

Yoshiyuki Ueno

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Department of Gastroenterology, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan

Competing Interests

We declare the following personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: YT and SO were employees of Piolax Medical Devices, Inc. Piolax Medical Devices, Inc. produced stents. MT conducted contractual research for Piolax Medical Devices, Inc. within a joint research project. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.