Heart Muscle Tissue Engineering Advantages And Challenges In Cardiac Microtissues

The human heart is a complex, multicellular organ with limited regenerative capacity. In vitro modeling of the human heart is not only important to better understand the composition and function thereof, but also to understand diseases or drug response. Cardiac tissue engineering and three-dimensional (3D) culture technologies have substantially advanced the way in which cardiovascular diseases can be modelled, the effects of potential drugs can be assessed and cardiac function can be understood. Additionally, the increased use of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) derived cardiomyocytes (CMs) has brought researchers even closer to mimicking the in vivo environment, since these cells have proven to be more relevant than animal derived CMs. In combination, this has resulted in a surge in the generation and application of 3D hPSC-derived cardiac microtissues in recent years. These microtissues are typically smaller than 500 μm, can be produced by various approaches and can either consist of CMs only, or in combination with additional relevant cell types which would typically be found in the heart. The advantage of such cardiac microtissues as opposed to conventional engineered heart tissue is the scalability thereof; however challenges are abundant and require extensive efforts in development. That being said, the potential of microtissues far outweigh the current challenges, and could be used for novel, cutting-edge approaches in cardiac developmental studies, disease modeling and therapeutic application.