Multi-cellularity in cardiac tissue engineering, how close are we to native heart tissue?

ABSTRACT

Tissue engineering is a complex field where the elements of biology and engineering are combined in an attempt to recapitulate the native environment of the body. Tissue engineering has shown one thing categorically; that the human body is extremely complex and it is truly a difficult task to generate this in the lab. There have been varied attempts at trying to generate a model for the heart with numerous cell types and different scaffolds or materials. The common underlying theme in these approaches is to combine together matrix material and different cell types to make something similar to heart tissue. Multi-cellularity is an essential aspect of the heart and therefore critical to any approach which would try to mimic such a complex tissue. The heart is made up of many cell types that combine to form complex structures like deformable chambers, a tri-layered heart muscle, and vessels. Thus, in this review we will summarise how tissue engineering has progressed in modelling the heart and what gaps still exist in this dynamic field.