Current Trends in Cardiac Tissue Engineering and Regeneration

Dear Colleagues,

Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. The adult heart is a vital and highly specialized organ of the human body, with limited capability of self-repair and regeneration after damage or in disease conditions. Recent advances in pharmacological interventions have not been able to ameliorate cardiovascular-related morbidity and mortality. Although several strategies including small molecules, gene delivery, and stem cells have been utilized to regenerate myocardium, engineered cardiac tissue (including stem-cell-derived tissue)-based therapy remains a major approach in replenishing the dead/damaged myocardium in regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine utilizing cardiac tissue engineering can augment the body's regenerative ability by replacing tissue sections, enhancing the regenerative potential, and improving cardiac function. Therefore, there is a need to review the status, criteria, design, and detailed understanding of cardiac tissue engineering to generate cardiac tissue grafts to replace or regenerate damaged or diseased tissue and restore cardiac function. Engineered cardiac tissues will facilitate progress in regenerative medicine, disease modeling, and drug development. This Special Issue, entitled “Current Trends in Cardiac Tissue Engineering and Regeneration”, addresses the central role of engineered cardiac-tissue-based therapy in the regeneration of damaged/dead myocardium tissue and restoring cardiac function by bringing together contributions from worldwide experts on stem cell biology and engineering.

This Special Issue on “Current Trends in Cardiac Tissue Engineering and Regeneration” will focus on original research papers and comprehensive reviews, dealing with cutting-edge experimental and computational methodologies, state-of-the-art bioengineering technologies used to create functional cardiac tissues for a variety of applications in vitro and in vivo in the human body system. Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

(1) Advanced experimental and computational methodologies to create cardiac tissue for regenerative therapy;

(2) Stem-cell-based generation of cardiac tissue for cardiac tissue injury repair;

(3) State-of-the-art bioengineering technologies used to create functional cardiac tissues for in vitro and in vivo studies including organs-on-a-chip, scaffold-free cellular approaches, cell+ scaffold approaches, Cell-free Biomedical approaches, cell self-assembly approaches, etc.;

(4) Studies involving understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of engineered cardiac-tissue-based regeneration and its limitations;

(5) Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanism of oxidative stress and Inflammation as a limitation of engineered cardiac tissue-based therapy.

Dr. Santosh Kumar Yadav
Dr. Finosh G. Thankam
Guest Editors

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• cardiac tissue engineering
• stem-cell-based cardiac tissue generation
• oxidative stress and Inflammation in engineered cardiac tissue-based regeneration
• bioengineering technologies to create cardiac tissue
• organs-on-a-chip
• scaffold-free cellular approaches in regenerative therapy