Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are one of the leading causes of death in the United States. However, the treatment of myocardial infarction (MI) driven by cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is limited to heart transplantation. Tissue engineering is an alternative solution as the availability of heart transplantation largely depends on the availability of donor organs. While synthetic materials may trigger anti-inflammatory responses after implantation, natural biomaterials such as silk have a high potential as a material for building scaffolds due to its high biocompatibility and biodegradability. Spider silk is a material composed of fibroin proteins. When the proteins are spun, they are called recombinant spider silk, which can be used itself or combined with other biomaterials for surface modification. Especially in relation to cardiovascular tissue engineering, spider silk’s biocompatibility has proven to resemble the native cardiac tissue. Spider silk’s potential for cardiovascular tissue engineering application is investigated through reliable literature reviews and comparisons with other biomaterials including collagen, PCL, PLA, silkworm silk, alginate, chitosan. The growth of the field in research for each biomaterial in relation to cardiovascular tissue engineering was statistically evaluated. The statistical results indicated that there is an urgent need for more research of spider silk and cardiovascular tissue engineering. The mechanical properties of the biomaterials including ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and elastic modulus (EM) were analyzed corresponding to those of native cardiac tissue. The results suggested spider silk’s promising ability to be used as a biomaterial for scaffolds. The applicability of spider silk to electrospinning and combination with poly (3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) were discussed.