reinforcement of a decellularized extracellular matrix-derived hydrogel using nanofibers for cardiac tissueengineering

The role of heart disease in increasing worldwide death and the limited availability oforgans for transplantation have encouraged multiple strategies to fabricate functional andimplantable constructs. one of these strategies is to develop a biologically similar hearttissue scaffold, in which two types of fiber and hydrogel are commonly used. toward thisgoal, taking advantage of both hydrogels properties and fibers features with excellentmechanical properties can be considered as a promising method. the purpose of this studywas to develop a fiber/hydrogel composite of gelatin, poly-caprolactone (pcl), cardiacextracellular matrix (ecm), and chitosan. the fibrous scaffolds of pcl and gelatin werecharacterized by sem, water drop contact angle test, ftir, and mechanical tests. theresults showed that the average diameter of nanofibers, hydrophilicity and mechanicalproperties of the fibrous scaffolds increased with increasing the gelatin content in thespinning solution. furthermore, the results of mechanical tests indicated that byintegrating fibers with gelatin to pcl mass ratio of 2 in the hydrogel of chitosan and ecmwith a mass ratio equal to 1, we obtained a construct with similar mechanical properties tonative heart tissue, which may be proposed as an appropriate scaffold for heart tissueengineering.