marfan’s syndrome (mfs) is a genetic disorder associated with autosomal dominant inheritance. in mfs, the most prevalent cause of death is cardiovascular involvement. here we introduce a family with a severe penetration of mfs. eleven members of this family have mfs (father, two daughters, three sons, and five grandchildren). the most common cardiac involvement in our patients was mitral valve ...

Owing to the inability of self-replacement by a damaged myocardium, alternative strategies to heart transplantation have been explored within the last decades and cardiac tissue engineering/regenerative medicine is among the present challenges in biomedical research. Hopefully, several studies witness the constant extension of the toolbox available to engineer a fully functional, contractile, a...

Unlike heart valves or blood vessels, heart muscle has no replacement alternatives. The most challenging goal in the field of cardiovascular tissue engineering is the creation/ regeneration of an engineered heart muscle. Recent advances in methods of stem cell isolation, culture in bioreactors, and the synthesis of bioactive materials promise to create engineered cardiac tissue ex vivo. At the ...