Construction Of Engineered Cardiac Tissue In Vitro Using Chitosan/Collagen Scaffold: An Experimental Study

Driven by enormous clinical need of curing heart failure,myocardial tissue engineering has become a prime focus of research within the field of tissue engineering. Myocardial tissue engineering combines isolated functional cardiomyocytes and a biodegradable or nondegradable biomaterial to repair diseased heart muscle. This article initially explore the possibility of using Chitosan/Collagen scaffold to construct engineered heart tissue.Neonatal rat cardiac myocytes were seeded in vitro in a Chitosan/Collagen scaffold where Chitosan and collagen were mixed together at the ratio of 9:1,to construct engineered heart tissue. The micrograph of chitosan/college scarfold were investigated by using FEGSEM. FEGSEM results reveals the composite scaffold has a good surface micrograph with the porosity o up to 90% and pore size generally from 200-400μm,which is necessary for long-term survival of cells.When culturing the cell, a control experiment was taken to prove wheather the collagen coating can promote the adherance of cardiomyocyte or not. Trypan staining was taken to test the survival rate of isolated cells,the morphology of cardiomyocytes were observed under inverted microscope. The results showed the number of viable cells on the Chitosan/Collagen scaffold is as much as one on Collagen scaffold,and collagen coating can promote the adherance of cardiomyocyte .The MTT test was applied to quantitatively assess the number of viable cells on the Chitosan/Collagen scaffold.Electrical activity of CS/Col structure were tested by a self-made device,the result proved cells survived on the scaffold and contracted.According to the results of the experiments, Chitosan/Collagen scaffold can be used to construct engineered heart tissue.