Regulation of the microenvironment for cardiac tissue engineering

Abstract

The microenvironment of myocardium plays an important role in the fate and function of cardiomyocytes (CMs). Cardiovascular tissue engineering strategies commonly utilize stem cell sources in conjunction with microenvironmental cues that often include biochemical, electrical, spatial and biomechanical factors. Microenvironmental stimulation of CMs, in addition to the incorporation of intercellular interactions from non-CMs, results in the generation of engineered cardiac constructs. Current studies suggest that use of these factors when engineering cardiac constructs improve cardiac function when implanted in vivo. In this review, we summarize the approaches to modulate biochemical, electrical, biomechanical and spatial factors to induce CM differentiation and their subsequent organization for cardiac tissue engineering application.

Keywords: biophysical; cardiomyocytes; mechanical; rigidity; stem cells; tissue engineering.

Figure 1.. Cardiomyocyte troponin-T-cell marker expression assay on an aligned anisotropic scaffold.

(A) Troponin-T immunostaining 72 h after seeding human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes. (B) Merged view of the human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes stained for troponin-T and Hoechst 33342 nuclear dye on parallel-aligned electrospun scaffolds that autofluorescence (in blue color). Scale bar = 100 µm.

Figure 2.. Biomechanical stretching.

Illustrations of uniaxial, biaxial and equiaxial stretch.