In Cardiac Tissue Engineering the goal is to use patient-specific stem cells and engineered scaffolds to help with the regeneration of heart tissues.

I used decellularized porcine heart as the scaffold to support the cells.

The decellularization process has 2 main objects:

1 - Remove Cells and Cell Debris, Immunogenic factors (DNA, gal-epitopes, etc.) and Surfactants (sodium dodecyl sulfate [SDS], Triton X-100)

2 -  Preserve the cardiac Extracellular Matrix (cECM), Vasculature, structure and components (collagen, laminin, elastin, fibronectin etc.) by minimizing the detergent exposure

Next, I made 200 µm thick slices from the decellularized hearts and recellularized them with human induced pluripotent stem cells.

After the differentiation process was complete, the tissue started to beat spontaneously.

Here is a video from the beating tissues:

And here is an interactive experience of the experiment: (you need Adobe Flash Player to view this file)