Encapsulation of cardiomyocytes in a fibrin hydrogel for cardiac tissue engineering

Culturing cells in a three dimensional hydrogel environment is an important technique for developing constructs for tissue engineering as well as studying cellular responses under various culture conditions in vitro. The three dimensional environment more closely mimics what the cells observe in vivo due to the application of mechanical and chemical stimuli in all dimensions (1). Three-dimensional hydrogels can either be made from synthetic polymers such as PEG-DA (2) and PLGA (3) or a number of naturally occurring proteins such as collagen (4), hyaluronic acid (5) or fibrin (6,7). Hydrogels created from fibrin, a naturally occurring blood clotting protein, can polymerize to form a mesh that is part of the body's natural wound healing processes (8). Fibrin is cell-degradable and potentially autologous (9), making it an ideal temporary scaffold for tissue engineering. Here we describe in detail the isolation of neonatal cardiomyocytes from three day old rat pups and the preparation of the cells for encapsulation in fibrin hydrogel constructs for tissue engineering. Neonatal myocytes are a common cell source used for in vitro studies in cardiac tissue formation and engineering (4). Fibrin gel is created by mixing fibrinogen with the enzyme thrombin. Thrombin cleaves fibrinopeptides FpA and FpB from fibrinogen, revealing binding sites that interact with other monomers (10). These interactions cause the monomers to self-assemble into fibers that form the hydrogel mesh. Because the timing of this enzymatic reaction can be adjusted by altering the ratio of thrombin to fibrinogen, or the ratio of calcium to thrombin, one can injection mold constructs with a number of different geometries (11,12). Further we can generate alignment of the resulting tissue by how we constrain the gel during culture (13). After culturing the engineered cardiac tissue constructs for two weeks under static conditions, the cardiac cells have begun to remodel the construct and can generate a contraction force under electrical pacing conditions (6). As part of this protocol, we also describe methods for analyzing the tissue engineered myocardium after the culture period including functional analysis of the active force generated by the cardiac muscle construct upon electrical stimulation, as well as methods for determining final cell viability (Live-Dead assay) and immunohistological staining to examine the expression and morphology of typical proteins important for contraction (Myosin Heavy Chain or MHC) and cellular coupling (Connexin 43 or Cx43) between myocytes.