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The autonomic nervous system (cANS) is essential for proper heart function, and complications such as heart failure, arrhythmias and even sudden cardiac death are associated with an altered cANS function. A changed innervation state may underlie (part of) the atrial and ventricular arrhythmias observed after myocardial infarction. In other cardiac diseases, such as congenital heart disease, autonomic dysfunction may be related to disease outcome. This is also the case after heart transplantation, when the heart is denervated. Interest in the origin of the autonomic nerve system has renewed since the role of autonomic function in disease progression was recognized, and some plasticity in autonomic regeneration is evident. As with many pathological processes, autonomic dysfunction based on pathological innervation may be a partial recapitulation of the early development of innervation. As such, insight into the development of cardiac innervation and an understanding of the cellular background contributing to cardiac innervation during different phases of development is required. This review describes the development of the cANS and focuses on the cellular contributions, either directly by delivering cells or indirectly by secretion of necessary factors or cell-derivatives.

Using a panel of molecular tissue markers, the non-dilated BAV patients can be divided into groups susceptible and non-susceptible to aortopathy.

The vascularization of tissue engineered products represents a key issue in regenerative medicine which needs to be addressed before the translation of these protocols to the bedside can be foreseen. Here we propose a multistep procedure to prepare pre-vascularized three-dimensional (3D) cardiac bio-substitutes using dynamic cell cultures and highly porous biocompatible gelatin scaffolds. The strategy adopted exploits the peculiar differentiation potential of two distinct subsets of adult stem cells to obtain human vascularized 3D cardiac tissues. In the first step of the procedure, human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) are seeded onto gelatin scaffolds to provide interconnected vessel-like structures, while human cardiomyocyte progenitor cells (hCMPCs) are stimulated in vitro to obtain their commitment toward the cardiac phenotype. The use of a modular bioreactor allows the perfusion of the whole scaffold, providing superior performance in terms of cardiac tissue maturation and cell survival. Both the cell culture on natural-derived polymers and the continuous medium perfusion of the scaffold led to the formation of a densely packaged proto-tissue composed of vascular-like and cardiac-like cells, which might complete maturation process and interconnect with native tissue upon in vivo implantation. In conclusion, the data obtained through the approach here proposed highlight the importance to provide stem cells with complementary signals in vitro able to resemble the complexity of cardiac microenvironment.