Epicardial transplantation of antioxidant polyurethane scaffold based human amniotic epithelial stem cell patch for myocardial infarction treatment

Myocardial infarction (MI) is a leading cause of death globally. Stem cell therapy is considered a potential strategy for MI treatment. Transplantation of classic stem cells including embryonic, induced pluripotent and cardiac stem cells exhibited certain repairing effect on MI via supplementing cardiomyocytes, however, their clinical applications were blocked by problems of cell survival, differentiation, functional activity and also biosafety and ethical concerns. Here, we introduced human amniotic epithelial stem cells (hAESCs) featured with immunomodulatory activities, immune-privilege and biosafety, for constructing a stem cell cardiac patch based on porous antioxidant polyurethane (PUR), which demonstrated decent hAESCs compatibility. In rats, the administration of PUR-hAESC patch significantly reduced fibrosis and facilitated vascularization in myocardium after MI and consequently improved cardiac remodeling and function. Mechanistically, the patch facilitated a desirable immune response for cardiac repair, framing the infiltration of neutrophils and inflammatory macrophages. Our findings may provide a potential therapeutic strategy for MI. Overall design: To investigate the effects of the PUR-hAESC patch on cardiac immune cells. We performed scRNA-seq analysis of sorted CD45+ cells from the hearts of MI and PUR-hAESC groups 7 days after the operation using the 10x Genomics platform