bioinspired device improves the cardiogenic potential of cardiac progenitor cellst

Objective: functional cardiac tissue engineering holds promise as a candidate approach for myocardial infarction. tissue engineering has emerged to generate functional tissue constructs and provide an alternative means to repair and regenerate damaged heart tissues. materials and methods: in this experimental study, we fabricated a composite polycaprolactone (pcl)/gelatine electrospun scaffold with aligned nanofibres. the electrospinning parameters and optimum proportion of the pcl/ gelatine were tested to design a scaffold with aligned and homogenized nanofibres. using scanning electron microscopy (sem) and mechanophysical testes, the pcl/gelatine composite scaffold with a ratio of 70:30 was selected. in order to simulate cardiac contraction, a developed mechanical loading device (mld) was used to apply a mechanical stress with specific frequency and tensile rate to cardiac progenitor cells (cpcs) in the direction of the aligned nanofibres. cell metabolic determination of cpcs was performed using real-time polymerase chain reaction(rt-pcr). results: physicochemical and mechanical characterization showed that the pcl/gelatine composite scaffold with a ratio of 70:30 was the best sample. in vitro analysis showed that the scaffold supported active metabolism and proliferation of cpcs, and the generation of uniform cellular constructs after five days. real-time pcr analysis revealed elevated expressions of the specific genes for synchronizing beating cells (myh-6, ttn and cx-43) on the dynamic scaffolds compared to the control sample with a static culture system. conclusion: our study provides a robust platform for generation of synchronized beating cells on a nanofibre patch that can be used in cardiac tissue engineering applications in the near future.