A microphysiological system combining electrospun fibers and electrical stimulation for the maturation of highly anisotropic cardiac tissue.
Abstract
The creation of cardiac tissue models for preclinical testing is still a non-solved problem in drug discovery, due to the limitations related to thein vitroreplication of cardiac tissue complexity. Among these limitations, the difficulty of mimicking the functional properties of the myocardium due to the immaturity of the used cells hampers the obtention of reliable results that could be translated into human patients.In vivomodels are the current gold standard to test new treatments, although it is widely acknowledged that the used animals are unable to fully recapitulate human physiology, which often leads to failures during clinical trials. In the present work, we present a microfluidic platform that aims to provide a range of signaling cues to immature cardiac cells to drive them towards an adult phenotype. The device combines topographical electrospun nanofibers with electrical stimulation in a microfabricated system. We validated our platform using a co-culture of neonatal mouse cardiomyocytes and cardiac fibroblasts, showing that it allows us to control the degree of anisotropy of the cardiac tissue inside the microdevice in a cost-effective way. Moreover, a 3D computational model of the electrical field was created and ...Continue Reading
References
Effect of Electromechanical Stimulation on the Maturation of Myotubes on Aligned Electrospun Fibers.
Controlling the contractile strength of engineered cardiac muscle by hierarchal tissue architecture.
Related Concepts
Related Feeds
Cardiac Regeneration
Cardiac regeneration enables the repair of irreversibly damaged heart tissue using cutting-edge science, including stem cell and cell-free therapy. Discover the latest research on cardiac regeneration here.
Cardiac Electrophysiology
Cardiac electrophysiology is the study of electrical activities of the heart and includes the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiac events. Find the latest research on cardiac electrophysiology here.