Development of Extracellular Matrix based scaffold for cardiac patch

Myocardial infarction (MI) is the sudden loss of blood supply to heart tissue which leads to initiation in cell death cascade affecting the proper function of heart. The majority of world population is affected by MI. The approach of cardiac tissue engineering is to repair and replace affected heart tissue to restore the function of the tissue. Biomaterial used for development of a construct so as to provide matrix for the cells to reside was aimed where decellularised ECM from porcine and the mechanical property of the dECM was enhanced by combining with alginate and chitosan. One set of hydrogel consist of alginate-ECM and the other set of hydrogel consist of chitosan-ECM. This study involves the preparation of hybrid hydrogel system and effects of crosslinker on the mechanical property of the material. Among all the sets two hydrogel systems showed improved mechanical strength: 1:1 (alginate-ECM) and 1:2 (chitosan-ECM). Further, the effects of loading PLGA microparticles to them on the rheology were also characterized.