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Updated: Jun 15, 2026
Fabrication of Biologically Derived Injectable Materials for Myocardial Tissue Engineering
Published on: December 20, 2010
Injectable cardiac tissue engineering for the treatment of myocardial infarction
Haibin Wang1, Jin Zhou, Zhiqiang Liu
1Department of Tissue Engineering, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences and Tissue Engineering Research Center, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing, PR China.
Insights
Injectable cardiac tissue engineering offers a minimally invasive approach to regenerate heart tissue damaged by myocardial infarction. This innovative therapy aims to improve cell retention and survival, addressing limitations of current treatments for heart failure.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Regenerative Medicine
- Cardiovascular Research
Background:
- Heart disease remains a leading cause of death globally, with myocardial infarction causing irreversible cardiac tissue loss and heart failure.
- Current therapies primarily manage disease progression, necessitating novel approaches for cardiac tissue regeneration.
- Limited donor availability and suboptimal cell retention/survival hinder current cell-based therapies for heart failure.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review recent advancements in injectable cardiac tissue engineering for heart regeneration.
- To explore the role of biomaterials in enhancing cell-based cardiac therapies.
- To discuss preclinical and clinical findings, as well as remaining challenges in the field.
Main Methods:
- Review of literature on injectable cardiac tissue engineering approaches.
- Analysis of cell sources, biomaterials, and their impact on cardiac repair.
- Evaluation of preclinical and clinical study outcomes.
Main Results:
- Injectable cardiac tissue engineering shows promise as a minimally invasive alternative to existing methods.
- Biomaterials significantly improve cell retention, survival, and differentiation for enhanced cardiac function.
- Progress has been made in preclinical and clinical applications, though challenges persist.
Conclusions:
- Injectable cardiac tissue engineering represents a significant advancement in treating heart failure post-myocardial infarction.
- Further research is needed to optimize biomaterials and cell sources for improved clinical outcomes.
- This approach holds potential to overcome donor shortages and improve patient prognosis.
Abstract:
Future perspectives Heart disease is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Myocardial infarction leads to permanent loss of cardiac tissue and ultimately heart failure. However, current therapies could only stall the progression of the disease. Thus, new therapies are needed to regenerate damaged hearts to overcome poor prognosis of patients with heart failure. The shortage of heart donors is also a factor for innovating new therapies. Although the cardiac performance by cell-based therapy has improved, unsatisfactory cell retention and transplant survival still plague this technique. Because biomaterials can improve the cell retention, survival and differentiation, cardiac tissue engineering is now being explored as an approach to support cell-based therapies and enhance their efficacy for cardiac disease. In the last decade, cardiac tissue engineering has made considerable progress. Among different kinds of approaches in the cardiac tissue engineering, the approach of injectable cardiac tissue engineering is more minimally invasive than that of in vitro engineered tissue or epicardial patch implantation. It is therefore clinically appealing. In this review, we strive to describe the major progress in the filed of injectable cardiac tissue engineering, including seeding cell sources, biomaterials and novel findings in preclinical studies and clinical applications. The remaining problems will also be discussed.
