Modelling the interaction between induced pluripotent stem cells derived cardiomyocytes patches and the recipient hearts
Creators: name: Fassina, Damiano
Publisher: name: Imperial College London
Year: 2022

description: Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death worldwide. The single biggest killer is represented by ischemic heart disease. Myocardial infarction causes the formation of non-conductive and non-contractile, scar-like tissue in the heart, which can hamper the heart's physiological function and cause pathologies ranging from arrhythmias to heart failure. The heart can not recover the tissue lost due to myocardial infarction due to the myocardium's limited ability to regenerate. The only available treatment is heart transpalant, which is limited by the number of donors and can elicit an adverse response from the recipients immune system. Recently, regenerative medicine has been proposed as an alternative approach to help post-myocardial infarction hearts recover their functionality. Among the various techniques, the application of cardiac patches of engineered heart tissue in combination with electroactive materials constitutes a promising technology. However, many challenges need to be faced in the development of this treatment. One of the main concerns is represented by the immature phenotype of the stem cells-derived cardiomyocytes used to fabricate the engineered heart tissue. Their electrophysiological differences with respect to the host myocardium may contribute to an increased arrhythmia risk. A large number of animal experiments are needed to optimize the patches' characteristics and to better understand the implications of the electrical interaction between patches and host myocardium. In this Thesis we leveraged cardiac computational modelling to simulate \emph{in silico} electrical propagation in scarred heart tissue in the presence of a patch of engineered heart tissue and conductive polymer engrafted at the epicardium. This work is composed by two studies. In the first study we designed a tissue model with simplified geometry and used machine learning and global sensitivity analysis techniques to identify engineered heart tissue patch design variables that are important for restoring physiological electrophysiology in the host myocardium. Additionally, we showed how engineered heart tissue properties could be tuned to restore physiological activation while reducing arrhythmic risk. In the second study we moved to more realistic geometries and we devised a way to manipulate ventricle meshes obtained from magnetic resonance images to apply \emph{in silico} engineered heart tissue epicardial patches. We then investigated how patches with different conduction velocity and action potential duration influence the host ventricle electrophysiology. Specifically, we showed that appropriately located patches can reduce the predisposition to anatomical isthmus mediated re-entry and that patches with a physiological action potential duration and higher conduction velocity were most effective in reducing this risk. We also demonstrated that patches with conduction velocity and action potential duration typical of immature stem cells-derived cardiomyocytes were associated with the onset of sustained functional re-entry in an ischemic cardiomyopathy model with a large transmural scar. Finally, we demonstrated that patches electrically coupled to host myocardium reduce the likelihood of propagation of focal ectopic impulses. This Thesis demonstrates how computational modelling can be successfully applied to the field of regenerative medicine and constitutes the first step towards the creation of patient-specific models for developing and testing patches for cardiac regeneration.