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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2017 Jun 29;102(2):197–199. doi: 10.1002/cpt.724

Figure 1. Tissue engineered heart repair by EHM implantation.

Figure 1

Self-organization of cardiomyocytes and stroma cells (in case of EHM fibroblasts) is supported by defined stimuli in a collagen-hydrogel (refer to Tiburcy et al. 2017 for details). Cast-molding and tissue fusion are applied to scale tissue according to clinical needs. Testing of EHM allografts confirmed a multimodal mode of action, with a dominant therapeutic effect by electromechanical integration of contractile EHM as well as ancillary effects by paracrine support and mechanical stabilization (refer to Zimmermann et al. 2006); note that all tested tissue formats (Fix, ECT, EHM) resulted in augmentation of the anterior heart wall thickness (AWThd), whereas only the implantation of EHM resulted in enhanced systolic thickening of the anterior heart wall (AWThF). Fix: formaldehyde fixed EHM (mechanical stabilization); ECT: tissue composed of viable non-myocytes (paracrine effect and mechanical stabilization); EHM: engineered heart muscle (remuscularization). AWThd and AWThF were measured by MRI. Investigated animals are indicated in the top bars. Graphs adapted from Zimmermann et al. 2006.