Building Implantable Cardiac Patches Using Synthetic Fibers
Outcome/Accomplishment
Researchers at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Cellular Metamaterials (NSF CELL-MET) Engineering Research Center (ERC) have found a way to use synthetic fibers to create a reinforced composite material that is easier to handle than previous engineered cardiac tissues and thus can be used to make a cardiac patch that surgeons can more readily graft onto the surface of a patient’s heart. CELL-MET is based at Boston University, with partners at the University of Michigan (U-M) and Florida International University.
Impact/Benefits
Heart failure accounts for nearly 18 million deaths annually worldwide and costs the U.S. healthcare system alone approximately $400 billion each year. When a patient suffers a heart attack, the resulting oxygen deprivation leads to the permanent death of heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes. Heretofore, the only real cure for the resulting heart failure is transplantation; but there is a long wait for donor organs. NSF CELL-MET is working to engineer functional, living cardiac tissue grafts (“patches”) that can restore function in the patient’s own heart. While tissue engineering researchers have successfully built thin layers of organized cardiac tissue in the past, scaling these up into a thick, implantable patch has proven difficult because the tissue they work with is very soft and difficult for surgeons to use. This advance moves medical science one step closer to the manufacture of functional, large-scale cardiac patches for replacing damaged heart tissue.
Explanation/Background
The CELL-MET team developed a microfabrication approach to producing “anisotropic myobundles”—highly aligned centimeter-long strips of stem cell-derived cardiac muscle tissue. To create a functional patch, they found that two critical components must work in tandem to guide the formation of functional myobundles. First, microscopic cell-adhesive synthetic fibers provide the needed mechanical cues to embedded cardiomyocytes, encouraging them to spread, align, and assemble organized myofibrils (the contractile units of a muscle cell). Second, induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac fibroblasts (iCFs) are support cells essential to cardiac tissue structure. The researchers were surprised to find that immature iCFs significantly outperformed the original primary cardiac fibroblasts (pCFs) in remodeling the tissue, allowing cell forces to compact the structure and increase cell density.
When the fibers made in the CELL-MET lab were combined with iCFs, the results were very promising. They formed highly aligned, three-dimensional tissue structures with enhanced cell spreading, superior myofibril formation, and synchronous contraction, providing a major step forward in the biomanufacturing of therapeutic heart tissue.
Progress in this effort was reported in June 2026 in Advanced Functional Materials from the lab of Brendon Baker, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at U-M, building upon research led by a former U-M graduate student, BME Ph.D. candidate Maggie Jewett.
Location
Boston, MassachusettsStart Year
Biotechnology and Healthcare
Biotechnology and Healthcare
Lead Institution
Core Partners
Fact Sheet
Outcome/Accomplishment
Researchers at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Cellular Metamaterials (NSF CELL-MET) Engineering Research Center (ERC) have found a way to use synthetic fibers to create a reinforced composite material that is easier to handle than previous engineered cardiac tissues and thus can be used to make a cardiac patch that surgeons can more readily graft onto the surface of a patient’s heart. CELL-MET is based at Boston University, with partners at the University of Michigan (U-M) and Florida International University.
Location
Boston, MassachusettsStart Year
Biotechnology and Healthcare
Biotechnology and Healthcare
Lead Institution
Core Partners
Fact Sheet
Impact/benefits
Heart failure accounts for nearly 18 million deaths annually worldwide and costs the U.S. healthcare system alone approximately $400 billion each year. When a patient suffers a heart attack, the resulting oxygen deprivation leads to the permanent death of heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes. Heretofore, the only real cure for the resulting heart failure is transplantation; but there is a long wait for donor organs. NSF CELL-MET is working to engineer functional, living cardiac tissue grafts (“patches”) that can restore function in the patient’s own heart. While tissue engineering researchers have successfully built thin layers of organized cardiac tissue in the past, scaling these up into a thick, implantable patch has proven difficult because the tissue they work with is very soft and difficult for surgeons to use. This advance moves medical science one step closer to the manufacture of functional, large-scale cardiac patches for replacing damaged heart tissue.
Explanation/Background
The CELL-MET team developed a microfabrication approach to producing “anisotropic myobundles”—highly aligned centimeter-long strips of stem cell-derived cardiac muscle tissue. To create a functional patch, they found that two critical components must work in tandem to guide the formation of functional myobundles. First, microscopic cell-adhesive synthetic fibers provide the needed mechanical cues to embedded cardiomyocytes, encouraging them to spread, align, and assemble organized myofibrils (the contractile units of a muscle cell). Second, induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac fibroblasts (iCFs) are support cells essential to cardiac tissue structure. The researchers were surprised to find that immature iCFs significantly outperformed the original primary cardiac fibroblasts (pCFs) in remodeling the tissue, allowing cell forces to compact the structure and increase cell density.
When the fibers made in the CELL-MET lab were combined with iCFs, the results were very promising. They formed highly aligned, three-dimensional tissue structures with enhanced cell spreading, superior myofibril formation, and synchronous contraction, providing a major step forward in the biomanufacturing of therapeutic heart tissue.
Progress in this effort was reported in June 2026 in Advanced Functional Materials from the lab of Brendon Baker, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at U-M, building upon research led by a former U-M graduate student, BME Ph.D. candidate Maggie Jewett.