Design and development of a whole heart scaffold for engineering a bionic heart

The “Bionic heart” project aims at engineering a whole functional heart with built-in electronic system. The electronics were rationally designed to fit the anatomy of the heart, and provide online-monitoring and actuation of its function. Moreover, specialized components were incorporated to the electronics to allow on demand, controllable release of drugs.
One part of the project was to create a 3D, heart-structured scaffold that would support the assembly of the cardiac cells into a functional tissue. The general approach towards building this scaffold is by separately creating its different layers, and integrate them into a complex structure. The appropriate macrostructure of the heart, and an internal morphology of the ECM fibers, was achieved by decellularization of natural hearts. Following, the electronic mesh was integrated with a second scaffold, which was made of a thermoresponsive ECM-based hydrogel, and this layer was then integrated on top of the decellularized heart. Using scanning electron microscopy, we show the interactions between the different layers of the whole-heart scaffold. Today, ongoing studies are directed toward determination of the correct cell seeding strategies, to promote cell dispersion throughout the scaffold.
Looking forward, we expect that the development of the bionic heart will provide an in vitro platform for patient specific disease modeling, drug screening and for developing novel pharmacological therapeutics.