To Engineer a Heart
B.D. Ratner
University of Washington, Box 351720, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
A University of Washington, NIH-funded, Bioengineering Research
Partnership (BRP) has the challenging goal to tissue engineer (or
regenerate) heart muscle that might be useful for in vivo reparative
surgery. The unique muscle cells populating the heart, cardiomyocytes,
have lost the ability to replicate. The heart muscle itself is highly
vascularized. Muscle tissue is also aligned, organized with a
mechanically appropriate extracellular matrix and innervated. Surgical
considerations must be addressed. An interdisciplinary team funded
through the BRP is exploring the feasibility of engineering heart
muscle by addressing many of these challenges in a coordinated research
effort. The project has been active for 4+ years. Over this period of
time we have concluded that the two most pressing challenges that must
be addressed are source of cells (what cells can we use to generate
cardiomyocytes?) and quickly providing the oxygen and nutrients for
keeping these cells alive (angiogenesis).
Within this program, individual investigator projects, focused and
coordinated through a strategic plan, are addressing these key problems
and are studying: (1) unique porous gels to stimulate angiogenesis, (2)
surgical approaches to enhancing angiogeneis (3) the release of drugs,
growth factors, angiogenic factors etc (4) a gene transfer system to
improve the infarct bed for surgical transplantation (5) the
conversion of embryonic stem cells to cardiomyocytes (6) methods to
activate the proliferation of cardiomyocytes, and (7) methods to
improve the hypoxia-resistance of implants.
Key words:
Tissue Engineering, Bioengineering, Heart
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