Johns Hopkins University biomedical engineers, working with colleagues at Seoul National Laboratory in Korea, have produced a laboratory chip with nanoscopic grooves and ridges capable of growing cardiac tissue that more closely resembles natural heart muscle. The scientists say this chip could be used to design new therapies or diagnostic tests for cardiac disease.
"Heart muscle cells grown on the smooth surface of a Petri dish would possess some, but never all, of the same physiological characteristics of an actual heart in a living organism," said Andre Levchenko, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering. "That's because heart muscle cells - cardiomyocytes - take cues from the highly structured extracellular matrix or ECM, which is a scaffold made of fibers that supports all tissue growth in mammals. To address this, we developed a chip whose surface mimics the ECM."
Levchenko and his Korean colleagues developed a two-dimensional surface simulating the rigidity, size and shape of the fibers found throughout a natural ECM network. This bio-friendly surface, made of nontoxic polyethylene glycol, displays an array of long ridges resembling the folded pattern of corrugated cardboard.
