Advances in cardiac tissue engineering offer hope for an array of useful applications — from heart repair to disease modeling. As part of active, ongoing research related to bioengineering functional human organs, Adam Feinberg, the Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and his team are finding inspiration from the developing heart to rebuild human heart muscle.
Inside the adult human heart, the myocardium (muscular wall) is organized in a complex structure with layers of aligned cardiomyocytes (heart cells) wrapped in different orientations to support its pumping ability. It is formed during embryonic morphogenesis, where the heart starts as a linear tube and transforms into its four-chambered structure.
To better understand how cardiomyocytes interact with each other while they are reorganizing inside of the embryo, Feinberg's group engineered two-dimensional tissues using fibronectin micropatterns to identify and observe cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions. Previous research has explored how cardiomyocytes organize into an aligned tissue; however, the individual physical, mechanical and biochemical factors that drive cardiomyocyte alignment remain largely unknown.