EAPSI: Novel Nanomaterial-based Hybrid Scaffolds for Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease

作为死亡的主要原因，根据CDC在2015年发布的统计数据，心脏病是美国人每4例死亡中就有1例死亡的原因。因此，为了促进心血管疾病（CVD）的功能恢复，在产生用于恢复心力衰竭或心脏损伤的损失的心脏组织的稳健生物材料方面具有很大的价值。另一方面，干细胞是再生医学的关键，因为它们具有自我更新和分化成不同类型的成体细胞的独特能力。通过与京都大学iCeMS的Yong Chen教授团队的合作，该奖项中进行的研究对以创新的方式改善当前的干细胞治疗产生了重大影响。该研究奖还具有在其他干细胞治疗其他退行性疾病和疾病的应用中具有变革性的智力价值。本研究的目的是通过将干细胞高效分化为心肌细胞的新方法，使患者在未来更容易获得干细胞治疗，从而对社会产生积极的影响。本研究的目的是进一步提高对人类多能干细胞向心肌细胞分化的认识。为此，我们最近开发了一种独特的纳米材料-石墨烯混合支架，该支架将石墨烯基纳米材料的良好特性与静电纺丝纳米纤维在单个干细胞分化导管中相结合。纳米材料在生物应用中正变得越来越受欢迎，这是由于存在各种众所周知的化学官能团，以提供用于增加生物分子和细胞吸附的容许表面。我们的石墨烯-石墨烯杂化支架先前已经证明不仅是生物相容的，而且发现选择性地引导神经干细胞分化为成熟的少突胶质细胞，而不将外源因子引入细胞培养基中。基于这些先前研究的基础，并且考虑到产生强大的成熟心肌细胞群体的困难，我们的混合纳米材料支架方法可以作为改善心血管疾病治疗的强大资源。东亚和太平洋夏季研究所计划下的这个奖项支持美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和日本科学促进会共同资助。

As the leading cause of death, heart disease is responsible for 1 in every 4 deaths of Americans according to the statistics release by CDC in 2015. Therefore, in order to promote functional recovery from cardiovascular disease (CVD), there is strong value in generating a robust biomaterial for the restoration of lost cardiac tissue from heart failure or cardiac injury. Stem cells, on the other hand, hold the key to regenerative medicine due to their unique ability to both self-renew and differentiate into different types of adult cells. In partnership with Professor Yong Chen's Group at iCeMS, Kyoto University, the research conducted in this award has a strong impact in improving current stem cell therapy in an innovative way. This research award also carries the intellectual merit to be transformative in the applications of other stem cell therapy treatment for other degenerative disorders and diseases. A novel way to efficiently differentiate stem cells into a desired lineage, cardiomyocyte in this case, is sure to be beneficial to the society as it has the potential to make stem cell therapy more accessible to the patients in the future.The proposed project seeks to gain understanding and further enhance the differentiation of cardiomyocyte from human pluripotent stem cells. To this end, we have recently developed a unique nanomaterial-nanofiber hybrid scaffold that combines the well-established properties of graphene-based nanomaterials with electrospun nanofibers in a single stem cell differentiation conduit. Nanomaterials are becoming popular for bioapplications due to the presence of a variety of chemical functionalities that are well-known to provide permissive surfaces for increasing biomolecule and cellular adsorption. Our graphene-nanofiber hybrid scaffolds have demonstrated previously to be not only biocompatible, but found to selectively guide the differentiation of neural stem cells into mature oligodendrocytes, without the introduction of exogenous factors into the cell culture media. Base on the foundation of this previous studies, and given the difficulties of generating a robust population of mature cardiomyocytes, our hybrid nanomaterial scaffold approach can serve as a powerful resource in the arsenal for improving cardiovascular disease treatment. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.