Regenerative therapies using cell sheet-based tissue engineering for cardiac disease

At present, cardiac diseases are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the world. Recently, a cell-based regenerative medicine has appeared as one of the most potential and promising therapies for improving cardiac diseases. As a new generational cell-based regenerative therapy, tissue engineering is focused. Our laboratory has originally developed cell sheet-based scaffold-free tissue engineering. Three-dimensional myocardial tissue fabricated by stacking cardiomyocyte sheets, which are tightly interconnected to each other through gap junctions, beats simultaneously and macroscopically and shows the characteristic structures of native heart tissue. Cell sheet-based therapy cures the damaged heart function of animal models and is clinically applied. Cell sheet-based tissue engineering has a promising and enormous potential in myocardial tissue regenerative medicine and will cure many patients suffering from severe cardiac disease. This paper summarizes cell sheet-based tissue engineering and its satisfactory therapeutic effects on cardiac disease.