Tissue Engineering a Heart: Critical Issues

Abstract

Tissue engineering whole organs such as a functional heart is clearly ambitious, if not, as some would put it, ridiculous. But the problem of growing whole organs can be broken down into more manageable components and interim milestones. Furthermore, reaching an interim goal such as a cardiac patch or a strategy for vascularizing thick slabs of tissue has an intrinsic therapeutic value on its own. In fact, these spinoff benefits may be more valuable and may benefit more patients than the whole organ. Thus, the LIFE Initiative has been created to tissue engineer complex three-dimensional, mechanically robust and dynamic organs like the heart. But the underlying goal is to advance the science and art of tissue engineering, to create novel arrangements for collaborative research on a global scale, and to foster a new industry based on the capacity for treating human disease with replacement tissues and organs.