A collagen membrane-based engineered heart tissue improves cardiac function in ischemic rat hearts

In the relatively new field of cardiac tissue engineering, different biomaterials, methods and techniques have been tested for cardiac repair, but we are still far from the achievement of a valid model that can be tested for therapeutic goals. In this study, the authors examined the efficacy of newly preformed membranes based on collagen type I for the transplantation of cardiac cells. The membrane prototype, cross-linked with 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl ether (BDDGE) and fibronectin-enriched, gave rise to spontaneously beating heart cell constructs, 5–9 days after seeding with neonatal rat cardiac cells. This membrane was grafted, with and without beating cardiac cells, onto the infarcted area of rat models of heart failure. Seriate echocardiography, performed on rats before transplantation and at 4 and 8 weeks after transplantation, demonstrated that rats treated with collagen membranes previously seeded with beating cells showed an improvement in cardiac function after 8 weeks. These results suggest that this new type of collagen membrane can be used as vector for the transplantation of beating heart cells for the regeneration of the injured myocardium and hence represents an important potential tool for cardiac tissue repair technologies.