Myocardial Tissue Engineering

Regenerative therapy has rapidly developed as one of the most promising treatments for patients suffering from severe heart failure. Autologous bone marrow-derived cells and cardiac stem cells have been clinically applied for cell injection therapy for heart failure. As a next-generation therapy, tissue-engineered myocardial-patch transplantation has also been started clinically. As further advanced therapy, several researchers have started to fabricate three-dimensional beating myocardial tissues. One of the main problems in myocardial tissue engineering is neovascularization within the tissues during scale-up. Several innovative technologies have been developed to overcome the vascularization problem. This book broadly summarizes myocardial tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, which consists of myocardial cell sources, cell therapy for damaged hearts, and tissue engineering technologies for fabricating beating hearts. With respect to myocardial cell source, it focuses on cardiac cells differentiated from embryonic stem and induced pluripotent stem cells. It describes the remarkable results obtained in the past and the present to control neovascularization and presents the future challenges in myocardial tissue engineering research.