Engineering a robust and anisotropic cardiac-specific extracellular matrix scaffold for cardiac patch tissue engineering.

Extracellular matrix (ECM) fabricated using human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs)-derived cardiac fibroblasts (hiPSC-CFs) could serve as a completely biological scaffold for an engineered cardiac patch, leveraging the unlimited source and outstanding reproducibility of hiPSC-CFs. Additionally, hiPSC-CF-derived ECM (hiPSC-CF-ECM) holds the potential to enhance maturation of exogenous cardiomyocytes, such as hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs), by providing a microenvironment rich in cardiac-specific biochemical and signaling cues. However, achieving sufficient robustness of hiPSC-CF-ECM is challenging.