Minimally invasive injectable short nanofibers of poly(glycerol sebacate) for cardiac tissue engineering

Myocardial tissue lacks the ability to appreciably regenerate itself following myocardial infarction (MI) which ultimately results in heart failure. Current therapies can only retard the progression of disease and hence tissue engineering strategies are required to facilitate the engineering of a suitable biomaterial to repair MI. The aim of this study was to investigate the in vitro properties of an injectable biomaterial for the regeneration of infarcted myocardium. Fabrication of core/shell fibers was by co-axial electrospinning, with poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) as core material and poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) as shell material. The PLLA was removed by treatment of the PGS/PLLA core/shell fibers with DCM:hexane (2:1) to obtain PGS short fibers. These PGS short fibers offer the advantage of providing a minimally invasive injectable technique for the regeneration of infarcted myocardium. The scaffolds were characterized by SEM, FTIR and contact angle and cell-scaffold interactions using cardiomyocytes. The results showed that the cardiac marker proteins actinin, troponin, myosin heavy chain and connexin 43 were expressed more on short PGS fibers compared to PLLA nanofibers. We hypothesized that the injection of cells along with short PGS fibers would increase cell transplant retention and survival within the infarct, compared to the standard cell injection system.