Growing vascularized heart tissue from stem cells

Abstract

The promise of stem cells to repair the heart after damage or heart attack has not been realized because most such cells are lost after transplantation. A new approach is to grow substantial viable pieces of cardiac tissue from human stem cells by cardiac tissue engineering. Such constructs must be fully vascularized and perfused to ensure the viability of clinically relevant volumes of tissue. This requires careful choice of cells, culture conditions, a biomaterial to act as scaffold, and crucial strategies for vascularization. Autologous stem cells with high plasticity, which would avoid the need for antirejection therapies after transplantation, are an attractive source of both cardiomyoc..