Cardiac Regeneration: A Promising Future For Tissue Engineering and Cardiac Repair

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of human death worldwide. These diseases have detrimental effects on the heart, damaging the tissue and disrupting healthy heart function. Cardiac functioning begins to dissipate as a result of cardiac cell death and subsequent damage to the structures of the heart. Cardiac regeneration is an evolving field in cardiac therapy that aims to rebuild damaged cardiac tissue that may have previously been beyond repair. Understanding how cardiac cells function within the heart is crucial in studying tissue engineering and cardiac regeneration. With the loss of cardiac cells following cardiovascular disease, the ability to extract healthy cardiac cells for tissue engineering becomes greatly limited. Thus, tissue cultures and cellular reprogramming become crucial methods for in vitro expansion of healthy cells. Understanding regeneration in the heart, cell sources necessary for cardiac regeneration, and the existing models that have been implemented for cardiac regeneration are crucial in advancing its study and improving methods to take cardiac regeneration to clinical trials. Imaging techniques to model patient-specific structures of the heart will ultimately help map damaged tissue, assisting with the entire regeneration process. Investigating the limitations of these techniques is equally important to improving cardiac regeneration, with the possibility to save countless lives.