Department of Bio-Medical Engineering, The Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2010 Feb;1188:46-51. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.05082.x.
Myocardial infarction can lead to irreversible heart failure. In an attempt to restore function in the failing heart, tissue-engineered cardiac constructs can be applied to repopulate scar tissue with a new pool of contractile cells. Effective engineering of viable thick complex tissue-constructs requires intense vascularization. Furthermore, endothelial-cardiomyocyte crosstalk plays a key role in mutually enhancing tissue functionality, which can further improve construct survival. The ability to generate an engineered, vascularized muscle tissue was demonstrated by us using the skeletal and the cardiac muscle models. In the skeletal model, we showed that prevascularization of the construct promoted perfusion of the graft. More recently, we successfully generated a beating human cardiac muscle-construct, containing an endothelial network, by co-culturing human embryonic stem cell-derived-cardiomyocytes, fibroblasts, and endothelial cells within biodegradable scaffolds. Such muscle-constructs could contribute significantly to the emerging discipline of cardiovascular regenerative medicine as well as to the study of the important role of tissue vascularization.
心肌梗死可导致不可逆性心力衰竭。为了恢复衰竭心脏的功能，可以应用组织工程心脏构建体将新的收缩细胞池重新填充到瘢痕组织中。有效的、有活力的、复杂的组织构建体的有效工程化需要强烈的血管生成。此外，内皮细胞-心肌细胞的串扰在相互增强组织功能方面起着关键作用，这可以进一步提高构建体的存活率。我们使用骨骼肌和心肌模型证明了生成工程化的、血管化的肌肉组织的能力。在骨骼肌模型中，我们表明构建体的预先血管化促进了移植物的灌注。最近，我们成功地通过在可生物降解的支架内共培养人胚胎干细胞衍生的心肌细胞、成纤维细胞和内皮细胞，生成了含有内皮网络的搏动性人心肌构建体。这种肌肉构建体可以为心血管再生医学这一新兴学科以及组织血管生成的重要作用的研究做出重要贡献。
