Biomaterials for heart valves tissue engineering

IntroductionValvular heart diseases representa major public health issue affecting more than 5 million adults (inthe US).Overcomingthe drawbacks of current therapies for valvular heart diseases, heart valve tissue engineering (HVTE) has been proposed as a promising strategy for regenerating and/or repairing diseased valve tissue. Sothose beneficialmaterials that used in HVET scaffolds to recreate key features in the heart valve microenvironment such as anisotropic and hierarchical tri-layered architecture, biodegradability, biocompatibility andmechanical anisotropy.ObjectivesReview the biomaterials used in HVET.MethodsThe literature review on the heart valve tissue engineering has been undertaken. Literature search was performed in each of three major electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar) using the key words ‘‘Heart valve tissue engineering’’ and ‘‘Biomaterials’’.ResultsSynthetic biodegradable elastomers such as polyE-caprolactone(PCL),polyurethane (PU), Polyhydroxyalkanoate(PHA)and polyglycerol sebacate(PGS)-based thermoset elastomersare widely used in HVET. Both these thermoset and thermoplastic biodegradable elastomers have their own pros and cons.Most of the thermoplastic elastomers are non-toxic with good processability. However, they do suffer from heterogeneous degradation profile, which may lead to unpredictable loss of mechanical integrity during degradation. On the other hand, thermoset elastomers have more controllable degradation kinetics and predicable mechanical stability during degradation. However, they have poor processability compared to thermoplastic elastomers.ConclusionElastomers with wide their special properties such as flexibility, controlling the degradation rates, biocompatibility are promising choice for using in HVET

Keywords:

Heart valve , tissue engineering , Anisotropy , HVET