抄録
Regenerative medicine has currently emerged as one of the most promising therapies for patients suffering from severe heart failure. Direct implantation of isolated skeletal myoblasts and bone-marrow derived cells has already been clinically performed and research on fabricating three-dimensional (3-D) cardiac grafts using tissue engineering technologies has also now been initiated. In contrast to scaffold-based methods, we have proposed cell sheet-based tissue engineering, which involves stacking confluently cultured cell sheets to construct 3-D cell-dense tissues. Upon layering, individual cardiomyocyte sheets integrate to form a single, continuous, cell-dense tissue that resembles native cardiac muscle. When transplanted directly to host hearts, these engineered myocardial tissues are able to form morphological connections to the host with the presence of functional gap junctions. The transplantation of layered cardiomyocyte sheets has also been shown to be able to repair damaged cardiac muscle. As a next step, we have attempted to promote neovascularization within bioengineered myocardial tissues to overcome the longstanding limitations on engineered tissue thickness. Finally as a possible advanced therapy, we are now trying to fabricate functional myocardial tubes which may have the potential for circulatory support. Cell sheet engineering technologies therefore shows enormous promise as a novel approach in the field of myocardial tissue engineering.
