Avant-Garde Hydrogels as Stem Cell Niche for Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases remain the primary cause of death in the modern world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), almost 18 million people lose their lives each year due to cardiac dysfunction. Nearly 75% of the cases are related to heart attack, stroke, and heart failure. Furthermore, the limited restoration capacity of the adult cardiac tissue leads to irreversible changes in myocardial injury and ischemia, which seriously increases the mortality rates. Currently, the available therapeutic approaches for cardiovascular dysfunctions mainly depend on pharmaceutical drugs, vascular assist devices, or organ transplantations in severe cases. However, these strategies cannot prevent ischemia-related damages or restore the dysfunction of heart tissue. Besides, there are certain limitations, including donor shortage, thrombosis of the device, immune rejection reactions, and operative morbidity of the patient. Therefore, combining stem cells with outstanding hydrogels has become a critically important phenomenon in treating cardiovascular disease. Today, stem cell-based applications form the pivot point of regenerative treatments due to their differentiation and immunomodulatory capacity. However, due to low cellular retention and the inhomogeneous therapeutic activities, the effectiveness of stem cell regeneration in clinical and preclinical studies is reduced. Hence, the synergetic approaches of the injectable hydrogels with stem cells and subcellular bioactive tools may hold the promises of the next-generation therapies. Over the last decade, various functional hydrogels from natural, synthetic, or decellularized tissue precursors have been developed and investigated for cardiovascular applications. In this chapter, advances in stem cell therapy have been discussed with the latest research on functional hydrogels for cardiovascular regeneration. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.