FIGURE 3.

Schematic illustration of the fabrication of hydrogels from the cardiac decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) for cardiac tissue engineering. (A) Schematic of the producers to produce the dECM hydrogels followed by their mixing with reduced graphene oxide (rGO) to synthesize the dECM-rGO composite hydrogels with their structure examined using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). (B) Enhancement of the contractile functions and improvement of the twitch forces, maximal twitch forces, relaxation, and contraction velocity of dECM-rGO cardiac tissues. (C) Improvement of the sarcomere development in the regenerated cardiac tissues especially in the dECM-rGO hydrogels presented in the fluorescent images with amelioration of the engineered sarcomere length and Z-band width. Copyright © 2021, ELSEVIER Publishing Group. Replicated with permission from (Tsui et al., 2021).