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Cell Sheets for Cardiac Tissue Engineering

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Organ Tissue Engineering

Part of the book series: Reference Series in Biomedical Engineering ((TIENRE))

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Abstract

Recent studies have reported that the injection of isolated cells can improve cardiac function in models of myocardial infarction. However, the loss of transplanted cells from the target site due to local hypoxia and cell washout remains a major problem. To overcome these limitations, we have developed cell sheet-based tissue engineering that allows the generation of confluent cultured cells, stacked cell sheets, and three-dimensional (3D) cell-dense tissues. Cell sheet-based patches can improve the function of damaged hearts in animal models. Stacked cardiac cell sheets beat synchronously both in vitro and in vivo and have the characteristic structure of native heart tissue. Upscaling of this technology through multistep transplantation of triple-layered cell sheets allowed the construction of functional cardiac tissue about 1 mm thick. Furthermore, we succeeded in bioengineering 3D cardiac tissue containing a vascular network by in vitro perfusion culture of cell sheets stacked sequentially on a vascular bed obtained from resected tissue. Since the vascular bed was excised with its artery and vein intact, the bioengineered tissue could be transplanted by anastomosis of its vessels with those of the host animal. Following the creation of cardiac patches for direct implantation onto a damaged heart, the next challenge will be to engineer organs with tubular or spherical structures that can function as pumps to provide circulatory support. The goal for the future is to develop this technology to create functional organ-like tissues with vascular networks that can be used in patients as an alternative to conventional organ transplantation.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number 19H04453. We thank OxMedComms (www.oxmedcomms.com) for writing assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Tokyo, Japan

    Hidekazu Sekine, Jun Homma & Tatsuya Shimizu

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  1. Hidekazu Sekine
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  2. Jun Homma
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  3. Tatsuya Shimizu
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Correspondence to Hidekazu Sekine .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Klinik für Urologie, NORD1 B200, Universitäts Spital, Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Daniel Eberli

  2. Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, NC, USA

    Sang Jin Lee

  3. Inst of Tendon and Bone Regeneration, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria

    Andreas Traweger

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Sekine, H., Homma, J., Shimizu, T. (2020). Cell Sheets for Cardiac Tissue Engineering. In: Eberli, D., Lee, S., Traweger, A. (eds) Organ Tissue Engineering. Reference Series in Biomedical Engineering(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18512-1_3-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18512-1_3-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18512-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18512-1

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