Carbon-Nanotube-Embedded Hydrogel Sheets for Engineering Cardiac Constructs and Bioactuators

By S. Shin, S. Jung, Momen Zalabany, Keekyoung Kim, P. Zorlutuna, Sang Bok Kim, M. Nikkhah, Masoud Khabiry, M. Azize, Jing Kong and 6 more. ACS Nano, 2013

865 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We engineered functional cardiac patches by seeding neonatal rat cardiomyocytes onto carbon nanotube (CNT) incorporated photocrosslinkable gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogel. The resulting cardiac constructs showed excellent mechanical integrity and advanced electrophysiological functions. Specifically, myocardial tissues cultured on 50 μm thick CNT-GelMA showed 3 times higher spontaneous synchronous beating rates and 85% lower excitation threshold, compared to those cultured on pristine GelMA hydrogels. Our results indicate that the electrically conductive and nanofibrous networks formed by CNTs within a porous gelatin framework is the key characteristics of CNT-GelMA leading to improved cardiac cell adhesion, organization, and cell-cell coupling. Centimeter-scale patches were released from glass substrates to form 3D biohybrid actuators, which showed controllable linear cyclic contraction/extension, pumping, and swimming actuations. In addition, we demonstrate for the first time that cardiac tissues cultured on CNT-GelMA resist damage by a model cardiac inhibitor as well as a cytotoxic compound. Therefore, incorporation of CNTs into gelatin, and potentially other biomaterials, could be useful in creating multifunctional cardiac scaffolds for both therapeutic purposes and in vitro studies. These hybrid materials could also be used for neuron and other muscle cells to create tissue constructs with improved organization, electroactivity, and mechanical integrity.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Biomedical Engineering, Surgery

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/40a885e6fe8cf03b427ec5c9ee01cdf54090f53e

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Citations in the corpus

Advances in engineering hydrogels (2017, background): “For example, carbon nanotube–composited gelatin methacryloyl hydrogels have been processed into flexible substrates as large as centimeter scales, and cardiomyocytes spontaneously and synchronously beating on the surfaces allow these bioactuators to exhibit rhythmic contraction or extension and swim”
Nanocomposite hydrogels for biomedical applications (2013, background): “Recent effort on GelMA-CNTs (Shin et al., 2013) and hyperbranched polyester (Zhang et al.”
Organ-on-a-Chip Platforms for Studying Drug Delivery Systems (2014, background): “Nevertheless, there are several reports on cardiac tissue engineering [76] and heart-on-a-chip [75] that promise to potentially emerge as physiologically relevant models for in vitro drug testing.”
Synthesis, properties, and biomedical applications of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogels (2015, methodology): “Hybrid hydrogels based on GelMA and other biopolymers The fabrication and use of GelMA hybrids with other biopolymers has been explored for diverse purposes, including enhancing mechanical pr operties [85, 86], tuning characteristics such as porosity, swelling ratio and degradability [86], or impart”