Abstract: BACKGROUND: Stem cell therapy is a hot spot and has been applied in various clinical disciplines at present, but it has little effect in the treatment of ischemic heart disease, mainly because the survival rate of stem cells transplanted into ischemic myocardium is very low. The discovery and application of new tissue engineering materials help to improve the survival rate of human mesenchymal stem cells in ischemic myocardium, which makes people see the broad application prospect of human mesenchymal stem cells in the treatment of ischemic myocardium.  
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the research progress of three kinds of common tissue engineering scaffolds in stem cell therapy for ischemic heart disease and put forward the future application prospects.
METHODS: PubMed and Web of Science databases were used. The English search words were “mesenchymal stem cells, biological hydrogel nanometer material, 3D printing, nanostructured material”. CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP databases were applied, and the Chinese keywords were “stem cells, ischemic heart disease, tissue engineering, hydrogel, 3D printing, nano materials”. Relevant articles on tissue engineering technology in the treatment of ischemic heart disease from 2010 to 2021 were retrieved, excluding duplicate studies, case reports or meta-analysis articles, and finally 74 articles meeting the criteria were included for review.  
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) There are many kinds of gelatin gel substrate materials and preparation technologies available. It is also the most mature tissue engineering scaffold material and the most promising scaffold material for carrying stem cells to treat ischemic heart disease in the future. (2) Nano materials have unique physical and chemical properties. Scaffolds constructed with nano materials can not only promote the survival and proliferation of human mesenchymal stem cells in ischemic myocardium, but also make human mesenchymal stem cells well play its paracrine role, thus it plays a role in the treatment of myocardial ischemia. (3) The emerging 3D printing technology can use hydrogels, nano materials, and stem cells as raw materials to print the required cells, blood vessels, myocardium, ventricles, atria, and even “complete” hearts, but it still needs further development from clinical application. (4) In terms of future prospects, a large number of in vitro tissue and cell experiments help to establish a more perfect scaffold system and find the most suitable extracellular matrix environment for the survival of human mesenchymal stem cells. The construction of a standardized animal model of myocardial ischemia is conducive to in-depth understanding of the physiological performance of stem cells in different scaffold materials in basic research, and clinical application needs the support of animal experimental data from multiple centers and large samples in the future.

Key words: human mesenchymal stem cell, ischemic heart disease, tissue engineering, 3D printing, hydrogel, nanomaterial