Rational Design of a Conductive Collagen Heart Patch

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases, including myocardial infarction, are the cause of significant morbidity and mortality globally. Tissue engineering is a key emerging treatment method for supporting and repairing the cardiac scar tissue caused by myocardial infarction. Creating cell supportive scaffolds that can be directly implanted on a myocardial infarct is an attractive solution. Hydrogels made of collagen are highly biocompatible materials that can be molded into a range of shapes suitable for cardiac patch applications. The addition of mechanically reinforcing materials, carbon nanotubes, at subtoxic levels allows for the collagen hydrogels to be strengthened, up to a toughness of 30 J m and a two to threefold improvement in Youngs' modulus, thus improving their viability as cardiac patch materials. The addition of carbon nanotubes is shown to be both nontoxic to stem cells, and when using single-walled carbon nanotubes, supportive of live, beating cardiac cells, providing a pathway for the further development of a cardiac patch.

Impact of Antibiotics on the Proliferation and Differentiation of Human Adipose-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

“…Finally, it would be advised to choose the combination of antibiotics and antimycotics with caution, in a more targeted fashion, when propagating ADSC and possibly also other cell types. The findings are especially important given a rapid increase of experimental use of stem cells, in particular induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPS), and MSC (often ADSC), in the development of various regenerative medicine techniques [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. Rapid development of direct transdifferentiation techniques, which bypass the stage/use of stem cells [ 1 , 36 , 37 , 38 ], is another area where the presented in this manuscript results may be of key importance for the optimal results.…”

Stimuli‐Responsive Biomaterials: Scaffolds for Stem Cell Control

“…For a scaffold, the encapsulating or composite material is usually a nonconductive biocompatible matrix, typically a hydrogel or polymer, and both synthetic and natural materials are commonly used. [105][106][107][108] Similarly to the conductive polymers, these materials can be processed into structured scaffolds through electrospinning or template synthesis ( Figure 8D). [109] www.advancedsciencenews.com www.advhealthmat.de…”

Electrically conductive materials for in vitro cardiac microtissue engineering

“…Furthermore, not only the microstructure of collagen was preserved following CNT incorporation, but also mechanical properties such as tensile stress, Young's modulus and toughness as well as electrical conductivity of composite patch were improved. Of note, type of CNT substantially influenced cellular adhesion to the engineered hydrogel as evidenced by more (Sherrell et al, 2017).…”

“…Thus, maximal excitability of cardiac cells was obtained at SWNT:Chitosan:Collagen hydrogels containing 2 g L −1 CNT and 1.0% w/v chitosan dispersant. Based on these findings, the engineered cardiac patch can provide sufficient mechanical support and promote cell survival, proliferation, differentiation as well as improvement in physiological properties (Sherrell et al, ).…”