EAPSI: Novel Nanomaterial-based Hybrid Scaffolds for Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease

Chueng Sy-Tsong D, Piscataway NJ

Investigators

Abstract

As the leading cause of death, heart disease is responsible for 1 in every 4 deaths of Americans according to the statistics release by CDC in 2015. Therefore, in order to promote functional recovery from cardiovascular disease (CVD), there is strong value in generating a robust biomaterial for the restoration of lost cardiac tissue from heart failure or cardiac injury. Stem cells, on the other hand, hold the key to regenerative medicine due to their unique ability to both self-renew and differentiate into different types of adult cells. In partnership with Professor Yong Chen's Group at iCeMS, Kyoto University, the research conducted in this award has a strong impact in improving current stem cell therapy in an innovative way. This research award also carries the intellectual merit to be transformative in the applications of other stem cell therapy treatment for other degenerative disorders and diseases. A novel way to efficiently differentiate stem cells into a desired lineage, cardiomyocyte in this case, is sure to be beneficial to the society as it has the potential to make stem cell therapy more accessible to the patients in the future. The proposed project seeks to gain understanding and further enhance the differentiation of cardiomyocyte from human pluripotent stem cells. To this end, we have recently developed a unique nanomaterial-nanofiber hybrid scaffold that combines the well-established properties of graphene-based nanomaterials with electrospun nanofibers in a single stem cell differentiation conduit. Nanomaterials are becoming popular for bioapplications due to the presence of a variety of chemical functionalities that are well-known to provide permissive surfaces for increasing biomolecule and cellular adsorption. Our graphene-nanofiber hybrid scaffolds have demonstrated previously to be not only biocompatible, but found to selectively guide the differentiation of neural stem cells into mature oligodendrocytes, without the introduction of exogenous factors into the cell culture media. Base on the foundation of this previous studies, and given the difficulties of generating a robust population of mature cardiomyocytes, our hybrid nanomaterial scaffold approach can serve as a powerful resource in the arsenal for improving cardiovascular disease treatment. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.