Novel approaches toward the generation of bioscaffolds as a potential therapy in cardiovascular tissue engineering

Cardiovascular disease associated with myocardial infarction (MI) is among the leading causes of mortality worldwide, in part, due to the limited regenerative capacity of tissues. Although various approaches have been employed to generate bioartificial myocardial tissues, including surgical reconstruction and the use of biosynthetic or biological cell-free grafts, many challenges still remain. Natural biomaterials based on decellularization have made significant inroads into the development of favorable biomatrices for myocardial tissue regeneration. This process occurs with the concept of removing whole cellular contents, while preserving the extracellular matrix components and all the necessary features of native tissues. Furthermore, acellular-derived matrices serve to stimulate proliferation and recruitment of endothelial cells by providing proliferation signals to cells. This review highlights a novel approach to generate natural three dimensional myocardial scaffolds for clinical applications.