Repairing chronic myocardial infarction with autologous mesenchymal stem cells engineered tissue in rat promotes angiogenesis and limits ventricular remodeling

Background: tissue engineering scaffold constitutes a new strategy of myocardial repair. here,we studied the contribution of a patch using autologous mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) seeded on collagen-1 scaffold on the cardiac reconstruction in rat model of chronic myocardial infarction (mi). methods. patches were cultured with controlled mscs (growth,phenotype and potentiality). twenty coronary ligated rats with tomoscingraphy (spect)-authenticated transmural chronic mi were referred into a control group (n = 10) and a treated group (n = 10) which beneficiated an epicardial msc-patch engraftment. contribution of msc-patch was tested 1-mo after using non-invasive spect cardiac imaging,invasive hemodynamic assessment and immunohistochemistry. results: 3d-collagen environment affected the cell growth but not the cell phenotype and potentiality. msc-patch integrates well the epicardial side of chronic mi scar. in treated rats,one-month spect data have documented an improvement of perfusion in mi segments compared to control (64 ± 4% vs 49 ± 3% p = 0.02) and a reduced infarction. contractile parameter dp/dtmax and dp/dtmin were improved (p & 0.01). histology showed an increase of ventricular wall thickness (1.75 ± 0.24 vs 1.35 ± 0.32 mm,p &0.05) and immunochemistry of the repaired tissue displayed enhanced angiogenesis and myofibroblast-like tissue. conclusion: 3d-msc-collagen epicardial patch engraftment contributes to reverse remodeling of chronic mi. © 2012 maureira et al.; licensee biomed central ltd.