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Strategies in cardiac tissue engineering
Author(s) -
Tee Richard,
Lokmic Zerina,
Morrison Wayne A.,
Dilley Rodney J.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
anz journal of surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.426
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-2197
pISSN - 1445-1433
DOI - 10.1111/j.1445-2197.2010.05435.x
Subject(s) - medicine , tissue engineering , economic shortage , context (archaeology) , biocompatible material , myocardial infarction , transplantation , scaffold , heart failure , cardiology , stem cell , biomedical engineering , intensive care medicine , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , government (linguistics)
In heart failure, post‐myocardial infarction and some congenital cardiac anomalies, organ transplantation is the only effective cure. Shortage of organ donors and complications of orthotopic heart transplant remain major challenges to the modern field of transplantation. Tissue engineering using cell‐based strategies presents itself as a new way of generating functional myocardium. Engineering functional myocardium de novo requires an abundant source of cells that can form cardiomyocytes. These cells may be used with biocompatible scaffold materials to generate a contractile myocardium. Lastly, to sustain the high metabolism of the construct, a functional vasculature needs to be developed with the forming cardiac tissue. This review provides an update on the progress of stem cell research in the context of cardiac tissue development, types of biomaterials used in cardiac tissue engineering (CTE) and currently employed strategies for vascularization in CTE. In addition, a brief overview of strategies utilized in CTE is provided.