Transcatheter tissue engineered heart valves.

Valvular heart disease represents a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Transcatheter heart valve replacement techniques have been recently introduced into the clinical routine expanding the treatment options for affected patients. However, despite this technical progress toward minimally invasive, transcatheter strategies, the available heart valve prostheses for these techniques are bioprosthetic and associated with progressive degeneration. To overcome such limitations, the concept of heart valve tissue engineering has been repeatedly suggested for future therapy concepts. Ideally, a clinically relevant heart valve tissue engineering concept would combine minimally invasive strategies for both, living autologous valve generation as well as valve implantation. Therefore, merging transcatheter techniques with living tissue engineered heart valves into a trascatheter tissue engineered heart valve concept could significantly improve current treatment options for patients suffering from valvular heart disease. This report provides an overview on transcatheter tissue engineered heart valves and summarizes available pre-clinical data.