Cardiac cell differentiation of muscle satellite cells on aligned composite electrospun polyurethane with reduced graphene oxide

Abstract

The damaged heart muscle loses its ability to contract and due to the replacement of heart-damaged muscles with a fibrous scar, structural and functional changes occur in the heart muscle. This scar cannot contract regularly and is not an excellent navigator for electrical signals. By developing the proper conditions for the combination of cells and three-dimensional scaffolds, heart tissue engineering allows for a mechanical protective structure for heart cells, as well as the presence of heart cells to repair damaged tissue. This three-dimensional structure is grafted to the infarcted area and improves cardiac efficiency. In this study, random and aligned polyurethane / reduced graphene oxide composite nanofibrous scaffolds were electrospun as scaffolds for cardiac tissue engineering. The properties of scaffolds were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), water contact angle, attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, and tensile measurements. Then, the isolated satellite cells from mouse were cultured on scaffolds and the effect of these properties on the growth, morphology, proliferation, differentiation, and expression of cell genes was investigated using Real-Time PCR method. The results showed that the presence of nanoparticles improved the mechanical properties of the scaffolds and the orientation of the fibers, which made it possible to better resemble the structural and mechanical properties of the cardiac tissues by presenting anisotropic wetting characteristics. Overall, the improvement of these properties and their close proximity to the properties of standard extracellular matrix (ECM) of heart improved the growth and differentiation of mouse satellite cells into cardiac prognostic cells.