Advances in cardiac tissue engineering and heart-on-a-chip

Area of Science:

• Biomaterials Science
• Cardiovascular Research
• Tissue Engineering

Background:

• Cardiac tissue engineering and heart-on-a-chip technologies are rapidly advancing.
• These fields leverage new biomaterial development and innovative fabrication techniques.
• Precise control over mechanical, electrical, and structural properties of cardiac tissues is crucial for modeling mature phenotypes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide an overview of cardiac physiology and define requirements for functional tissue recapitulation.
• To discuss commonly used biomaterials in cardiac tissue engineering and heart-on-a-chip.
• To review recent representative studies and outline common challenges in both fields.

Main Methods:

• Review of cardiac physiology requirements.
• Discussion of biomaterials used in cardiac tissue engineering and heart-on-a-chip.
• Analysis of recent studies and identification of common challenges.

Main Results:

• Induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac patches have advanced to human testing.
• Heart-on-a-chip platforms are widely adopted by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
• Key challenges include scalable fabrication, platform standardization, vascularization, maturation, and cryopreservation.

Conclusions:

• Functional cardiac tissue recapitulation requires careful consideration of biomaterials and fabrication.
• Significant challenges remain in translating these technologies for widespread clinical and research use.
• Future efforts should focus on standardization, maturation, vascularization, and cryopreservation for 'off-the-shelf' availability.