Myocardial tissue engineering strategies for heart repair: current state of the art

The current state-of-the-art treatment for heart failure patients is aimed at delaying disease progression, relieving symptoms, reducing morbidity and improving survival. Cardiac regeneration of the injured heart, however, is not achieved. Currently, numerous alternative treatment approaches aiming at cardiac regeneration are under investigation. Myocardial tissue engineering strategies follow the idea of in vitro generation of myocardium-like structures for epicardial transplantation. Recently, this field has made tremendous advances regarding in vitro optimization of tissue-engineered constructs, and valuable data have been generated in small animal models. This review summarizes the technical aspects of engineered human myocardium generation, lessons learned from preclinical in vitro and in vivo studies and the current state of this approach on its way to clinical translation.