Injectable Polymeric Materials and Evaluation of Their In Vivo Functional Assessment in Cardiac Tissue Engineering

Cardiac tissue engineering has grown as an indispensable field of research considering the increase in the number of heart failures and it has shown tremendous improvement in the past 10 years. Among the different kinds of approaches utilized for cardiac tissue engineering (TE), the approach using injectables is more clinically appealing because they offer a unique solution for replacing the damaged myocardial ECM and/or delivering cells directly to the infarct region, thus offering a solution for minimally invasive delivery in addition to providing sufficient mechanical support. The ultimate goal in cardiac TE is to generate biocompatible, non-immunogenic heart muscles with morphological and functional properties similar to native myocardium. Alginate, collagen, chitosan, peptides and fibrin glue are few biomaterials engineered for cardiac regeneration in various forms such as microspheres, nanofibers, self-assembled materials, gels etc and in vivo animal experiments are carried out in small and big animal models using these biomaterials with functional assessment using methods such as echocardiography, cardiovascular magnetic resonance, isolated Langendoff heart perfusion method, immuno histochemistry, etc. This paper reviews on the different polymeric materials used in vivo as injectables, and on the different functional assessment methods and instrumentations utilized for the evaluation of cardiac improvement and regeneration.