The explosion of stem cell research in the past several years has made its presence known in the field of cardiology and has been recently tasked with solving one of the largest health problems to afflict humanity: cardiovascular disease (CVD). Although stem cell therapy has shown glimmers of promise, significant problems remain that need to be addressed if these therapies are to ever find true success. One way to achieve this success is to take engineering principles and apply them to fabricate engineered cardiac tissues, composed of the aforementioned therapeutic stem cells and biomaterials to bolster the tissue's reparative capacity. In this review, the authors examine advancements in cardiac cell therapy and biomaterial research and discuss how their combination has been used to create tissue-engineered patches capable of restoring function to the damaged or failing myocardium.
Keywords: Biomaterials; Cardiac patch; Cardiac tissue engineering; Myocardial repair; Stem cells.