Biomaterial Interface in Cardiac Cell and Tissue Engineering

Cardiovascular diseases continue to be the leading cause of death while available clinical interventions have limited contributions to heart repair and regeneration. The field of cardiac cell and tissue engineering emerged to provide promising tools for understanding heart remodeling mechanisms and promoting heart repair through the combination of myocardial cells and biomaterials. In this chapter, we introduce the in vitro and in vivo applications of the most recently developed biomaterials, including bulk hydrogels, structural scaffolds and smart materials, for cardiac cell and tissue engineering. The properties of biomaterials and cell-biomaterial interactions could be tuned through various engineering techniques, which play an important role in directing myocardial behaviors, such as differentiation, maturation and phenotypical remodeling. Using these biomaterials, in vitro cardiac models with high physiological relevance have been established and efficient heart regeneration has been verified in many animal models. Although still far from clinical trials due to remained challenges, the “bottom up” design could enable customized assembly of cardiac tissue constructs and increase the merit of cardiac cell and tissue engineering in heart disease treatment.