Cardiac Organoid Systems Project

Tissue engineering holds enormous promise for restoring functionality in damaged regions of the chronically failing heart. The main approach of cardiac tissue engineering is to create cardiac grafts, either whole heart substitutes or tissues that can be efficiently implanted, regenerating the tissue and giving rise to a fully functional heart, without causing side effects. The creation of functional engineered cardiac tissue with electromechanical properties that mimic native human myocardium on a scalable platform has the potential to transform the treatment of chronic heart disease. The central thrust of this project is to extend the size of two photon polymerised structures beyond the typical scale achieved with the commercial systems. The project develops an electrically conductive functionality on photopolymerised tissue scaffolds. The project will investigate the impact on cells and vascular organoids relevant to the regeneration of damaged heart tissue.

The Cardiac Organoid Systems Partnership (COSP), is a collaboration between the NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Cellular Metamaterials (CELL-MET) in Boston University, the SFI Research Center for Medical Devices (CÚRAM), and the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine (WWIEM). The goal of this US-Ireland tripartite Center-to-Center (C2C) collaboration is to exploit our combined expertise in cardiac tissue engineering, laser metal interactions, and stem cell programming to develop high throughput, nanoscale metallic patterning on structures that enable functional cardio biosystems.