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

美国疾病控制与预防中心2015年发布的统计数据显示，每4名美国人死亡中就有1人死于心脏病，是导致死亡的主要原因。因此，为了促进心血管疾病（CVD）的功能恢复，产生一种强大的生物材料来修复因心力衰竭或心脏损伤而丢失的心脏组织具有很强的价值。另一方面，由于干细胞具有自我更新和分化成不同类型的成年细胞的独特能力，因此它是再生医学的关键。与京都大学iCeMS的陈勇教授小组合作，在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有很大的影响。该研究奖还具有智力价值，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。在这种情况下，一种有效地将干细胞分化成所需谱系（心肌细胞）的新方法肯定会对社会有益，因为它有可能使干细胞治疗在未来更容易为患者所接受。该项目旨在了解并进一步增强心肌细胞与人类多能干细胞的分化。为此，我们最近开发了一种独特的纳米材料-纳米纤维混合支架，它结合了石墨烯基纳米材料和静电纺纳米纤维在单个干细胞分化管道中的成熟特性。纳米材料在生物应用中越来越受欢迎，因为它具有多种化学功能，众所周知，这些功能可以为增加生物分子和细胞吸附提供允许的表面。我们的石墨烯-纳米纤维混合支架之前已经被证明不仅具有生物相容性，而且被发现可以选择性地引导神经干细胞分化为成熟的少突胶质细胞，而无需向细胞培养基中引入外源因子。基于先前研究的基础，并考虑到产生健壮的成熟心肌细胞群的困难，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。该奖项隶属于东亚和太平洋暑期研究所项目，由美国国家科学基金会和日本科学促进会共同资助，支持一名美国研究生进行暑期研究。

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.