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Review
. 2017 Mar;12(2):187-201.
doi: 10.2217/rme-2016-0132. Epub 2017 Feb 17.

Regulation of the microenvironment for cardiac tissue engineering

Maureen Wanjare  1   2 , Ngan F Huang  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

Regulation of the microenvironment for cardiac tissue engineering

Maureen Wanjare et al. Regen Med. 2017 Mar.

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was supported in part by grants to NF Huang from the US NIH (R00HL098688, R01HL127113 and R21EB020235), a Merit Review Award (1I01BX002310) from the Department of Veterans Affairs Biomedical Laboratory Research and Development service, the Stanford Chemistry Engineering & Medicine for Human Health, the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and a McCormick Gabilan fellowship. M Wanjare was supported by a diversity supplement throughthe US NIH (R01HL127113). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Figures

<b>Figure 1.</b>
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.
<b>Figure 2.</b>
Figure 2.. Biomechanical stretching.
Illustrations of uniaxial, biaxial and equiaxial stretch.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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