Cardiac cell networks on elastic microgrooved scaffolds

We sought to construct a model-engineered cardiac construct having anisotropic properties and consisting of inter-connected cardiac cells with syncytial tissuelike behavior. We report basic structural, electrophysiological and mechanical characterization of multicellular tissuelike engineered constructs developed using elastic matrices with 3-D surface microtopography. To properly assess functionality of the constructs in the tissue setting, we employed spatial optical fluorescence techniques enabling measurements at the micro- and macro-scale.