posted on 2017-06-06, 20:14authored byYaobin Wu, Ling Wang, Baolin Guo, Peter X Ma
Mimicking the anisotropic
cardiac structure and guiding 3D cellular
orientation play a critical role in designing scaffolds for cardiac
tissue regeneration. Significant advances have been achieved to control
cellular alignment and elongation, but it remains an ongoing challenge
for engineering 3D cardiac anisotropy using these approaches. Here,
we present a 3D hybrid scaffold based on aligned conductive nanofiber
yarns network (NFYs-NET, composition: polycaprolactone, silk fibroin,
and carbon nanotubes) within a hydrogel shell for mimicking the native
cardiac tissue structure, and further demonstrate their great potential
for engineering 3D cardiac anisotropy for cardiac tissue engineering.
The NFYs-NET structures are shown to control cellular orientation
and enhance cardiomyocytes (CMs) maturation. 3D hybrid scaffolds were
then fabricated by encapsulating NFYs-NET layers within hydrogel shell,
and these 3D scaffolds performed the ability to promote aligned and
elongated CMs maturation on each layer and individually control cellular
orientation on different layers in a 3D environment. Furthermore,
endothelialized myocardium was constructed by using this hybrid strategy
via the coculture of CMs on NFYs-NET layer and endothelial cells within
hydrogel shell. Therefore, these 3D hybrid scaffolds, containing NFYs-NET
layer inducing cellular orientation, maturation, and anisotropy and
hydrogel shell providing a suitable 3D environment for endothelialization,
has great potential in engineering 3D cardiac anisotropy.