Fig. 3.

Applications of graphene-based materials for cardiac tissue engineering. (a) Scar area determination by morph metric analysis. Images indicated that the cardiac fibrosis regions of left ventricle myocardial sections were stained by Sirius red. Sham operated and untreated infarcted group were used as controls. The figure showed ECM deposition (red area) in the scar tissue and the myocardium (the gray area) (Reprinted with permission from [22] Copyright (2014) American Chemical Society). (b-i) A photograph of the peeling process of cellular construct and the cross-section (top image) and top view (bottom image) confocal images of the interconnected sarcomeric structures of the 2-layer cardiomyocyte construct after 3-days of incubation. The cardiac cells were immunostained with sarcomeric α-actinin (red) and nuclei with DAPI (blue). (b-ii) Optical images of the 2-layer cardiac actuator (Reprinted with permission from [97] Copyright (2014) John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). (c-i) The formation of MeTro/GO network by both chemical and physical bonding. (c-ii) Images of MeTro/GO hydrogels under rotation strain (before the test (left panel), during the test (middle image), recovered gel after 10 rounds (right image)). (c-iii) Immunostaining of cardiomyoctes-seeded MeTro/GO gels after 7 days of incubation. Cells were labeled with connexin-43 (green), sarcomeric α-actinin (red), and nuclei (blue). (c-iv) Immunohistology images of MeTro/GO hydrogels after subcutaneous implantation for 28 days. (Reprinted with permission from [98] Copyright (2015) John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).