Extrinsically Conductive Nanomaterials for Cardiac Tissue Engineering Applications

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Myocardial infarction (MI) is the consequence of coronary artery thrombosis resulting in ischemia and necrosis of the myocardium. As a result, billions of contractile cardiomyocytes are lost with poor innate regeneration capability. This degenerated tissue is replaced by collagen-rich fibrotic scar tissue as the usual body response to quickly repair the injury. The non-conductive nature of this tissue results in arrhythmias and asynchronous beating leading to total heart failure in the long run due to ventricular remodelling. Traditional pharmacological and assistive device approaches have failed to meet the utmost need for tissue regeneration to repair MI injuries. Engineered heart tissues (EHTs) seem promising alternatives, but their non-conductive nature could not resolve problems such as arrhythmias and asynchronous beating for long term in-vivo applications. The ability of nanotechnology to mimic the nano-bioarchitecture of the extracellular matrix and the potential of cardiac tissue engineering to engineer heart-like tissues makes it a unique combination to develop conductive constructs. Biomaterials blended with conductive nanomaterials could yield conductive constructs (referred to as extrinsically conductive). These cell-laden conductive constructs can alleviate cardiac functions when implanted in-vivo. A succinct review of the most promising applications of nanomateri

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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