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Creation and Characterization of Gold‐Nanoparticle Containing Conductive Scaffolds for Culturing Cardiomyocytes

Cardiomyopathies, diseases of the heart, are one of the major causes of death in the United States, and thus there is great interest in preventing and treating these complications. However, due to the nature of limited availability of donors, many techniques and solutions are inadequate to meet the needs of the field. In particular, heart tissue transplantation, culturing human tissues/tissue‐derived cells and tissue engineering, and finding a suitable extracellular environment that closely resembles the natural environment of cardiomyocytes in vivo are difficult to attain. As such, a great deal of work has gone into efforts to produce polymers which mimic the natural cell environment in properties such as binding sites, stiffness, reactivity, and hydration. In our research, we are investigating the development and characterization of conductive polymer scaffolds providing cardiac tissue support, which will ideally aid in culturing cardiomyocytes for academic, research, and medical use. The core of our model is the incorporation of conductive gold nanorods into reverse thermal gel polymers. Synthesized gold nanorods utilized in this procedure are made with a high aspect ratio, at high purity and with defined surface functionalization. These conducting scaffolds should properly accommodate cardiac cells in building functional cardiac tissue constructs and further improving cell retention, spreading, cardiomyocytes long term survival and maturation, cell‐cell coupling and synchronized beating behavior at the tissue level. The nanoparticles have been synthesized, then covalently coupled into these scaffolds, resulting in order‐of‐magnitude increases in conductivity. The goal of this work aims to improve cardiac tissue engineering, so that it can be directed to ultimately repairing damaged heart muscle and improve overall cardiac function in cardiovascular diseases whether they have been acquired from past medical complications or developed through hereditary traits.