Stem Cell Applications in Cardiac Tissue Regeneration

According to the latest figures released from American Heart Association, cardiovascular pathologies are the leading cause of morbidity and death, with MI as one with predominant cause of irreparable loss of the functional myocardium. Hitherto, the pharmacological intervention has not been in the forefront to ameliorate MI-related morbidity and mortality. Nevertheless, the contemporary therapeutic strategies can only delay the rate of disease progression but most of these fails to repair the damaged myocardium. Due to limited regenerative potential of the resident CSCs, there is a dire need to develop strategies that could regenerate the damage myocardium. However, the idea of using stem cells to differentiate into the cardiac lineage has so far been a relatively tough proposition for researchers around the world due to its complex nature. Scientist have explored stem cell-based tissue engineering/regenerative medicine strategies to regenerate the infarcted myocardium. Nonetheless, limited success was achieved in cardiac regenerative approaches due to the complexity of cardiomyogenic differentiation process, and usage of native decellularized ECMs and/or Matrigel support as a scaffold material. In this book chapter, we will discuss in detail various aspects of stem cell-based therapeutic strategies, which are currently being developed and employed for regenerating the damaged myocardium. The chapter contents highlight the basic technologies using scaffold-based injectable hydrogel or patch-based delivery system to the recent advanced technologies such as 3D Bioprinting approach to construct the cardiac tissue for cardiac regeneration applications.