Tremendous efforts have been made for engineering cardiac tissue for myocardial infarction therapy [1]. Various materials and forming methods have been explored, but due to the specific physiological properties of cardiac muscle tissue, challenges still exist [2]. One of those is to create biomimetic extracellular materials to support cell function and electromechanical coupling. The scaffold material should be biocompatible, biochemically stable, mechanically strong, and highly extensible, just like native heart tissue [2]. Another challenge is to create vascular networks for oxygen and nutrient supply, much as the capillaries do in natural heart tissue [3]. In this study, chitosan and collagen were chosen to fabricate cardiac constructs with channels as small as 200 μm in diameter. Several factors such as chitosan and crosslinker concentrations and coating proteins were optimized for mechanical strength and cell seeding efficiency. Engineered tissues of significant size (12 mm in diameter × 2 mm thick) were generated in vitro using this method.

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