Rapid Prototyping of Engineered Heart Tissues through Miniaturization and Phenotype-Automation
Year: 2011
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Organ transplantation is a lifesaving procedure, yet the demand for transplants far exceeds the available supply. Each year, nearly seven thousand patients in the United States die while waiting for an organ transplant [1]. Developing heart muscles in vitro for transplantation [3] [4] is one approach that could ultimately overcome this critical shortage. For complex tissues such as a heart muscle, the final product has to mimic physiological functions as well as the regulatory system for regenerating the recipient’s tissue functions. Successful development of implantable and functional engineered tissues is currently hindered by the time-consuming and cost-intensive processes through which developers iteratively work to optimize tissue-fabrication protocols, needing to establish proper culture conditions and the ideal quantities of materials used. To overcome these burdens, it is critical to establish a prototyping process by which the developers can explore many parameters rapidly using minimal resources. To achieve this goal, 1) the prototypes of engineered tissues have to be small enough to save materials, including cells, extracellular matrices and growth factors that are necessary for the in vitro heart tissue development, and 2) the assay system to evaluate the heart tissue function has to be automated for rapid highthroughput analysis of prototyping results. In addition, a stable source of cells must be carefully selected to maintain the reproducibility of tissue production while scaling up the manufacturing capability.
Source: InTech eBooks
DOI: 10.5772/21199
Author: Tetsuro Wakatsuki
Language: English
Subfield: Surgery
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: National Institutes of Health
OpenAlex ID: W1548295227