Electrospun Acellular Heart ECM for Cardiac Tissue Engineering

Electrospun nanofiber is one of the promising alternatives for being used in tissue engineering and the drug delivery due to its controllable characteristics. However, choosing an appropriate biomaterial for regenerating a specific tissue plays a significant role in fabricating functional tissue-engineered constructs. The heart extracellular matrix (ECM)-derived electrospun nanofiber which mimics the physicochemical and structural characteristics of the cardiac tissue is advantageous to cardiac tissue engineering. In this study, the acellular calf heart ECM has been investigated as a potential biomaterial to be electrospun in a novel combination of poly vinyl pyrrolidone (PVP), gelatin (Gel) and polycaprolactone (PCL) for cardiac tissue engineering. The obtained fibers were aligned, uniform and bead free. After fabrication, the scaffolds were cross-linked in the glutaraldehyde vapor to become mechanically stronger and dissoluble in the aqueous environments. Considering the surface topography, biocompatibility, hydrophilicity, and mechanical properties, the fabricated hybrid electrospun ECM/PVP/Gel/PCL fibers can be proposed as a biomimetic scaffold for heart tissue engineering applications