Distilling complexity to advance cardiac tissue engineering.
The promise of cardiac tissue engineering is in the ability to recapitulate in vitro the functional aspects of a healthy heart and disease pathology as well as to design replacement muscle for clinical therapy. Parts of this promise have been realized; others have not. In a meeting of scientists in this field, five central challenges or "big questions" were articulated that, if addressed, could substantially advance the current state of the art in modeling heart disease and realizing heart repair.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Stem Cell Institute, Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
Brenda M
BM
Ogle
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Nenad
N
Bursac
Harvard Medical School and Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
Ibrahim
I
Domian
Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
Ngan F
NF
Huang
Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, INSERM U 970, Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou and University Paris Descartes, 75006 Paris, France.
Philippe
P
Menasché
Center for Cardiovascular Biology, Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Departments of Pathology, Bioengineering, and Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.
Charles E
CE
Murry
Departments of Mechanical Engineering and, by courtesy, Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Beth
B
Pruitt
Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G9, Canada.
Milica
M
Radisic
Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and Departments of Medicine and Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Joseph C
JC
Wu
Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Sean M
SM
Wu
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA.
Jianyi
J
Zhang
Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University Medical Center, Georg-August University Göttingen and DZHK (German Center for Cardiovascular Research), partner site Göttingen, 37075 Göttingen, Germany.
Wolfram-Hubertus
WH
Zimmermann
Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA. gv2131@columbia.edu.
Gordana
G
Vunjak-Novakovic
D000818:Animals; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D009206:Myocardium / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism; D032383:Myocytes, Cardiac / Q000166:cytology; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*