Nanoengineered biomaterials for cardiac regeneration

Cardiovascular diseases are among the most prevalent causes of morbidity and mortality around the world. With the current crises in the shortage of donors, there is an unmet demand for developing new regenerative strategies for treatment of this life-threatening disease. Tissue engineering by combining nanoengineered materials and stem cell technologies has recently emerged as a promising approach to regenerative medicine. Biomaterials are used for the delivery of cells and drugs to repair dysfunctional myocardium. Recently, various nanoengineered approaches have been used to develop even better scaffolding biomaterials for repair and regeneration of damaged (i.e., infarcted) myocardium. In this chapter, we first introduce the structure of the myocardium by discussing its anatomy, cellular composition, and the constituents of its extracellular matrix (ECM). Then we move on to highlight a number of promising nanoengineered biomaterials for cardiac tissue regeneration with special emphasis on using multifunctional nanomaterials to nanoreinforce scaffolds. Lastly, nanopatterned substrates and their applications in cardiac regeneration are also explored.