There are an estimated 23 million people with heart failure worldwide, with one year mortality rate of 30% following initial onset. With the great mismatch between available heart donors and the number of patients on transplant waiting lists, there is still an unmet critical need to develop treatment strategies for long-term replacement of injured myocardium. Tissue engineering strategies for regenerative medicine offer a promising avenue to address current limitations in organ transplantation in general, and cardiac repair in particular.<br/>Native ventricular myocardium consists of cardiac cells intertwined with electrically conductive Purkinje fibers within tightly packed and aligned (i.e. anisotropic) extracellular matrix (ECM). Following injury, replacement of infarcted myocardium would require proper scaffolding biomaterials to mimic the structural architecture of native myocardium. Although substantial progress has been made in the synthesis of new biomaterials using natural or synthetic polymers to replace injured myocardium, unfortunately, the electrical properties and the architecture of these hydrogels do not come close to the properties of the native myocardium.<br/>In this talk, I will highlight recent studies in our lab focused on synthesis and characterization of a new class of electrically conductive hydrogel based biomaterials with optimized properties for the development of highly organized cardiac micro-tissues. We have specifically developed photocrosslinkable gold nanorod (GNR)-incorporated gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogels with superior electrical conductivity, mechanical stiffness, and porous architecture. Our findings indicated significantly enhanced cardiac cell adhesion, formation of intact tissues with robust cell-cell coupling and contractility. In a follow up study, we utilized soft lithography to create surface micro-topographies (50 µm microgrooves) within nanoengineered GelMA-GNR conductive hydrogels to provide integrated topographical and electrical cues and mimic physiologically relevant cardiac cell function. Overall, our studies demonstrated the formation of cardiac micro-tissues with enhanced cellular organization and tissue-level synchronicity using GelMA-GNR hydrogel with significant potential for regeneration and repair of infarcted myocardium. <br/>

Nanoengineering of electrically conductive cardiac micro-tissues

254th National Meeting (2017)

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