Article abstract
Nature Materials 7, 1003 - 1010 (2008)
Published online: 2 November 2008 | doi:10.1038/nmat2316
Subject Categories: Polymers | Biomedical materials
Accordion-like honeycombs for tissue engineering of cardiac anisotropy
George C. Engelmayr, Jr1, Mingyu Cheng1, Christopher J. Bettinger2,3, Jeffrey T. Borenstein3, Robert Langer1,4 & Lisa E. Freed1
Abstract
Tissue-engineered grafts may be useful in myocardial repair; however, previous scaffolds have been structurally incompatible with recapitulating cardiac anisotropy. Here, we use microfabrication techniques to create an accordion-like honeycomb microstructure in poly(glycerol sebacate), which yields porous, elastomeric three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds with controllable stiffness and anisotropy. Accordion-like honeycomb scaffolds with cultured neonatal rat heart cells demonstrated utility through: (1) closely matched mechanical properties compared to native adult rat right ventricular myocardium, with stiffnesses controlled by polymer curing time; (2) heart cell contractility inducible by electric field stimulation with directionally dependent electrical excitation thresholds (p<0.05); and (3) greater heart cell alignment (p<0.0001) than isotropic control scaffolds. Prototype bilaminar scaffolds with 3D interconnected pore networks yielded electrically excitable grafts with multi-layered neonatal rat heart cells. Accordion-like honeycombs can thus overcome principal structural–mechanical limitations of previous scaffolds, promoting the formation of grafts with aligned heart cells and mechanical properties more closely resembling native myocardium.
- Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E25-330 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E25-330 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
- Biomedical Engineering Center, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, 555 Technology Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E25-330 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
Correspondence to: Lisa E. Freed1 e-mail: Lfreed@mit.edu
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