Cardiac tissue engineering aims to create cardiac tissue constructs that recapitulate the structure and function of the native heart. This approach has been widely used for creating myocardial implants for regenerative medicine, and more recently, for developing in vitro cardiotoxicity screening assays. However, once the engineered myocardial tissues are implanted or subjected to pharmacological stimuli, their performance should be monitored. Currently, there is no biomaterial that promotes functional tissues assembly while providing real‐time information about their function, in situ. In this study, the piezoelectric phenomenon is sought to be exploited, to measure the contractions generated by engineered cardiac tissues. A poly‐(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)‐based electrospun fiber scaffold is developed, and it is hypothesized that the contractions of cardiomyocytes in the scaffold will induce mechanical deformations, which will result in measurable electric voltage. The PVDF scaffolds are characterized and optimized for supporting formation of aligned, functional, cardiac tissues. The scaffolds' function is then validated as sensors for tissue contraction and it is demonstrated that they can sense contractions of tissues constructed from as few as 5 × 10⁵ cardiomyocytes. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that human induced pluripotent stem cells can be directly seeded and differentiated to cardiomyocytes, and then mature over the course of 40 days on the PVDF fiber scaffolds.

中文翻译：

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用于心脏组织工程，分化和成熟的电纺纤维PVDF-TrFe支架

心脏组织工程的目的是创建能概括天然心脏结构和功能的心脏组织构造。该方法已被广泛用于制造用于再生医学的心肌植入物，并且最近用于开发体外心脏毒性筛选测定法。但是，一旦植入工程化的心肌组织或对其进行药理刺激，则应对其性能进行监测。当前，没有生物材料能够促进功能组织的组装，同时就地提供有关其功能的实时信息。在这项研究中，寻求利用压电现象来测量由工程心脏组织产生的收缩。研发了一种基于聚偏氟乙烯（PVDF）的电纺纤维支架，并且假设支架中的心肌细胞的收缩将引起机械变形，这将导致可测量的电压。PVDF支架经过表征和优化，可支持对齐的功能性心脏组织的形成。然后验证了支架的功能是否可以作为组织收缩的传感器，并证明它们可以检测到由5×10的组织构成的组织收缩^5个心肌细胞。此外，证明了人诱导的多能干细胞可以直接接种并分化为心肌细胞，然后在40天的过程中在PVDF纤维支架上成熟。