TABLE 1.
Biomaterials used for cardiac tissue engineering.
| Materials | Advantages | Disadvantages | References |
| Natural materials • Collagen | Biocompatibility, biodegradability and high cell proliferation rate | Stiffness makes difficult the integration within the heart | Shi et al., 2011; Masumoto et al., 2016; Geng et al., 2018 |
| • Alginate | Biocompatibility and gelation capacity | Lack of integration with CMs | Landa et al., 2008; Geng et al., 2018; Maiullari et al., 2018 |
| • Fibrin | Biocompatibility, high cell adhesion | Poor resistance to mechanical stretch | Christman et al., 2004; Deng et al., 2015 |
| • Hyaluronic acid | Biocompatibility, high cell proliferation rate | Low mechanical properties | Abdalla et al., 2013; Bonafè et al., 2014 |
| • Decellularized extracellular matrices (dECM) | Biocompatibility and promotion of cell attachment | Batch-to-batch variability | Singelyn et al., 2012; Hernandez et al., 2018; Spang and Christman, 2018; Goldfracht et al., 2019; Traverse et al., 2019; Tsui et al., 2019 |
| Synthetic polymers • poly(ethylene glycol) poly(ε-caprolactone), poly(propylene) poly(vinyl alcohol), poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), poly(glycerol sebacate), poly(ester urethane)s | Possibility to customize material’s properties | Low biocompatibility. Poor cell adhesion and proliferation. | Martins et al., 2014; Zhou et al., 2014; Moorthi et al., 2017 |
| • Electroconductive polyaniline (PANi) and polypyrrole (PPy) polymers | Possibility to customize material’s properties. Environmental stability and electrical properties | Low biocompatibility and insoluble in water | Hsiao et al., 2013; Razak et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2016 |
| • Electroconductive Polythiophene polymers | Possibility to customize material’s properties, soluble in water | Limited processability | Richardson-Burns et al., 2007; Kaur et al., 2015 |
| • Electroconductive PEDOT:PSS polymers | Possibility to customize material’s properties, support cell attachment, thermal, electrical and chemical stability | Limited processability, need to be combined with other supporting materials | Hempel et al., 2017; Jiang et al., 2017; Roshanbinfar et al., 2018, 2019 |