“Thoughts on Relationships between Engineering and Tissue Engineering: A Focus on the Heart”
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Tissue Engineering occupies a rather prominent niche in the thinking (and funding) of bioengineers.  Some thoughts on how engineers can make contributions to tissue engineering will be presented.  Then, the talk will focus specifically on heart muscle tissue engineering.
 
A University of Washington, NIH-funded, Bioengineering Research Partnership (BRP) has the challenging goal to tissue engineer (or regenerate) heart muscle that might be useful for in vivo reparative surgery.  The unique muscle cells populating the heart, cardiomyoctyes, have lost the ability to replicate.  The heart muscle itself is highly vascularized.  Muscle tissue is also aligned, organized with a  mechanically appropriate extra cellular matrix and innervated. Surgical consideration must be addressed.   An interdisciplinary team funded thru the BRP is exploring the feasibility of engineering heart muscle  by addressing many of these challenges in a coordinated research effort. The project has been active for 4 years.  Over this period of time, we have concluded that the two most pressing challenges that must be addressed are source of cells (what cells can we use to generate cardiomyocytes?) and quickly the oxygen and nutrients for keeping these cells alive (angiogenesis).
 
Within this program, individual investigators projects, focused and coordinated through a strategic plan, are addressing these key problems and are studying:  (1) unique porous gels to stimulate angiogenesis, (2) surgical approaches to enhancing angiogenesis, (3) The release of drugs, growth factors, angiogenic factors, etc. (4) A gene transfer system to improve the infarct bed for surgical transplantation, (5) the conversion of embryonic stem cells to cardiomyocytes, (6) methods to activate the proliferation of cardiomyocytes; and (7) methods to improve the hypoxia-resistance of implants.