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  • Perspective
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Opportunities and challenges in cardiac tissue engineering from an analysis of two decades of advances

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 6, pages 327–338 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Engineered human cardiac tissues facilitate progress in regenerative medicine, disease modelling and drug development. In this Perspective, we reflect on the most notable advances in cardiac tissue engineering from the past two decades by analysing pivotal studies and critically examining the most consequential developments. This retrospective analysis led us to identify key milestones and to outline a set of opportunities, along with their associated challenges, for the further advancement of engineered human cardiac tissues.

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Fig. 1: Unique characteristics of human heart muscle.
Fig. 2: Three areas of focus in cardiac tissue engineering.
Fig. 3: A timeline of progress in the development of hECTs.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the funding support for our cardiac research by NIH (grants UH3EB025765, P41EB027062, HL076485, F30HL145921), NSF (grant ERC 1647837) and NASA (NNX16AO69A). All figures were created with BioRender.com.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Richard Z. Zhuang, Roberta Lock, Bohao Liu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Richard Z. Zhuang, Roberta Lock & Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

  2. Department of Medicine, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Bohao Liu & Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

  3. College of Dental Medicine, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

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Contributions

R.Z.Z., R.L., B.L. and G.V.-N. conceptualized, outlined and edited the manuscript. R.Z.Z., R.L. and B.L. surveyed relevant literature and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic.

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Competing interests

G.V.-N. co-founded TARA Biosystems, a company that has licensed some of the cardiac tissue-engineering methodologies developed in her laboratory, holds equity in the company and is serving on the Board of Directors. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Zhuang, R.Z., Lock, R., Liu, B. et al. Opportunities and challenges in cardiac tissue engineering from an analysis of two decades of advances. Nat. Biomed. Eng 6, 327–338 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-022-00885-3

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