Abstract
Stroke and cardiovascular episodes are still some of the most common diseases worldwide, causing millions of deaths and costing billions of Euros to healthcare systems. The use of new biomaterials with enhanced biological and physical properties has opened the door to new approaches in cardiovascular applications. Elastin-based materials are biomaterials with some of the most promising properties. Indeed, these biomaterials have started to yield good results in cardiovascular and angiogenesis applications. In this review, we explore the latest trends in elastin-derived materials for cardiac regeneration and the different possibilities that are being explored by researchers to regenerate an infarcted muscle and restore its normal function. Elastin-based materials can be processed in different manners to create injectable systems or hydrogel scaffolds that can be applied by simple injection or as patches to cover the damaged area and regenerate it. Such materials have been applied to directly regenerate the damaged cardiac muscle and to create complex structures, such as heart valves or new bio-stents that could help to restore the normal function of the heart or to minimize damage after a stroke. We will discuss the possibilities that elastin-based materials offer in cardiac tissue engineering, either alone or in combination with other biomaterials, in order to illustrate the wide range of options that are being explored. Moreover, although tremendous advances have been achieved with such elastin-based materials, there is still room for new approaches that could trigger advances in cardiac tissue regeneration.
Highlights
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), which are a group of illnesses that directly affect the heart and its normal function, including valve failure, stroke, aneurism of coronary vessels and other heart diseases, are the leading cause of death in the United States and Europe
In light of the above, it can be deduced that elastin is a crucial component of the extracellular matrix in cardiovascular tissues, it is not the major component in terms of dry weight
The research in elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs) started some decades ago, it can be seen that most of the studies and works in cardiovascular regeneration summarized in this review are from the last 5–10 years, a boom period in which we still are, and which is a short time for reaching preclinical or clinical trials
Summary
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), which are a group of illnesses that directly affect the heart and its normal function, including valve failure, stroke, aneurism of coronary vessels and other heart diseases, are the leading cause of death in the United States and Europe. Elastogenesis, which is a complicated process that has already been described elsewhere (Indik et al, 1989; BrownAugsburger et al, 1997), decreases with age (Vrhovski and Weiss, 1998; Miriam et al, 2013), and is difficult to achieve under in vitro conditions (Flanagan et al, 2009; Syedain et al, 2011; Driessen-Mol et al, 2014; Moreira et al, 2016) Given this lack of elastogenesis in adults and the crucial importance of elastin in cardiac tissues, some researchers have focused their efforts on the use of elastin-based biomaterials, or at least those based on the repetition of the amino acid sequence valine-prolineglycine-valine-glycine (VPGVG) that codes for the elasticity of the elastin molecule according to Urry’s model (Urry, 2006). We will focus on the latest results arising from the application of elastin-like materials in these three main areas
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