Fig. 4.

The application of conductive fibers in cardiac patches and CTE scaffolds. (A) Representative treatment of a conductive sub-micron fiber cardiac patch to promote the electrical signal transduction. Reproduced with permission from Ref. [63] Copyright 2021, American Chemical Society. (B) Immunofluorescence images stained with cTnT and Cx-43 for the infarcted-noninfarcted transition areas. The yellow arrows indicate the microvascular structures strained by Cx-43. Reproduced with permission from Ref. [64] Copyright 2021, Acta Materialia Inc. F-actin staining images (scale bar: 20 μm) and nucleus alignment analysis of cardiomyocytes on (C) random and (D) aligned CNT/silk fibrous scaffolds at day 7. Inset in the corner is the corresponding scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the fibrous membrane (scale bar: 5 μm). Reproduced with permission from Ref. [117] Copyright 2020, American Chemical Society. Confocal images of (E) NRCMs and (F)human induced pluripotent stem cells derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) cultured on electrospun fiber mats at day 5 stained for the cardiomyocyte-specific markers troponin I and/or sarcomeric-α-actinin. (Scale bars: (E): yellow: 25 μm, white: 4 μm; (F): yellow: 10 μm, white: 4 μm) Reproduced with permission from Ref. [118] Copyright 2019, The Authors. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. (G) Schematics showing the coculture procedure that cardiomyocytes were cultured on the NFYs-NET layer while green fluorescent protein-positive endothelial cells (GFP-ECs) were encapsulated within hydrogel shell. (H) Myocardium showing a gradual transition of aligned cell layers from endocardium to epicardium and schematics of multiple layers of fabrics assembled with the gradual transition of orientation. Reproduced with permission from Ref. [103] Copyright 2017, American Chemical Society.