The ability of the adult heart to regenerate cardio-
myocytes (CMs) lost after injury is limited, generating interest in
developing efficient cell-based transplantation therapies. Rigid car-
bon nanotubes (CNTs) scaffolds have been used to improve CMs
viability, proliferation, and maturation, but they require undesirable
invasive surgeries for implantation. To overcome this limitation, we
developed an injectable reverse thermal gel (RTG) functionalized
with CNTs (RTG-CNT) that transitions from a solution at room
temperature to a three-dimensional (3D) gel-based matrix shortly
after reaching body temperature. Here we show experimental evi-
dence that this 3D RTG-CNT system supports long-term CMs
survival, promotes CMs alignment and proliferation, and improves
CMs function when compared with traditional two-dimensional
gelatin controls and 3D plain RTG system without CNTs. Therefore,
our injectable RTG-CNT system could potentially be used as a minimally invasive tool for cardiac tissue engineering efforts.
