Cardiovascular Research Advance Access [Accepted Manuscript] published online on June 6, 2008
Cardiovascular Research, doi:10.1093/cvr/cvn149
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Porous Tissue Grafts Sandwiched with Multilayered Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Sheets Induced Tissue Regeneration for Cardiac Repair
a Department of Chemical Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
b Division of Cardiovascular Surgery, Veterans General Hospital-Taichung, and College of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
c Division of Cardiology, Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
d Bioresource Collection and Research Center, Food Industry Research and Development Institute,Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
# Correspondence to: Hsing-Wen Sung, PhD Professor Department of Chemical Engineering/Bioengineering Program National Tsing Hua University Hsinchu, Taiwan 30013 Phone: 8863-574-2504 Fax: 886-3-572-6832 E-mail: hwsung{at}che.nthu.edu.tw
Aim: To provide the basis for uniform cardiac tissue regeneration, a spatially uniform distribution of adhered cells within a scaffold is a prerequisite. To achieve this goal, a bioengineered tissue graft consisting of a porous tissue scaffold sandwiched with multilayered sheets of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) was developed.
Methods: This tissue graft (sandwiched patch) was used to replace the infarcted wall in a syngeneic Lewis rat model with an experimentally chronic myocardial infarction (MI). There were four treatment groups (n 
10): sham; myocardial infarction; empty patch; sandwiched patch.
Results: After a 7-day culture of the sandwiched patch, a tissue graft with relatively uniform cell concentrations was obtained. The cells were viable and tightly adhered to the tissue scaffold, as the endogenous extracellular matrix inherent with multilayered cell sheets can act as an adhesive agent for cell attachment and retention. At retrieval, the area of the empty patch was relatively enlarged suggesting reduced structural support, while that of the sandwiched patch remained about the same (P = 0.56). In the immunofluorescent staining, host cells together with neo-microvessels were clearly observed in the empty patch; however, there were still a large number of unfilled pores within the patch. In the sandwiched patch, besides host cells, originally seeded cells were populated within the entire patch. No apparent evidence of apoptotic cell death was found in both studied patches. Thus, the sandwiched-patch treated hearts demonstrated a better heart function to the empty-patch treated hearts (P < 0.05).
Conclusions: The results demonstrated that this novel bioengineered tissue graft can serve as a useful cardiac patch to restore the dilated left ventricle and stabilize heart functions after myocardial infarction.
Time for primary review: 23 days
* The first two authors (Chun-Hung Chen, Hao-Ji Wei) contributed equally to this work. To whom correspondence should be addressed: hwsung{at}che.nthu.edu.tw (Dr. H.W. Sung) and ychang{at}vghtc.gov.tw (Dr. Y. Chang).