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Regeneration and restoring the function of the myocardial‐infracted hearts have been one of the constant challenges in medicine. Recently, tissue engineering, using biocompatible substrates and stem cells, holds a real promise to solve these problems. Herein, poly(lactic‐co‐glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanofibers and platelet‐rich plasma (PRP) enriched PLGA nanofibers (PLGA‐PRP) were fabricated by electrospinning. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrated that fiber diameters in PLGA scaffolds with and without PRP were in the range of 500 ± 280 nm and fibers were also bead free, smooth, in random orientation, and with interconnected pores. During culture of the human‐induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) on the nanofibrous scaffold, further differentiation of the iPSCs to cardiomyocytes was detected in PLGA‐PRP nanofibers compared to the PLGA. This improvement in differentiation potential was evaluated at the morphological, molecular gene, and protein expression levels using SEM, real‐time reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR), and immunocytochemistry, respectively. The results obtained in this study highlighted the significance of natural growth factors present in the artificial scaffold applied in cardiac tissue engineering according to the improvements in cell‐biomaterial interactions. Taken together, our result indicated that PRP‐incorporated PLGA could be considered as a great potential candidate to use for engineering suitable myocardium replacement constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixing nitrogen-stabilizing leguminous forages such as Vicia spp. with livestock feeding systems like farm-pasture or farm-animal systems is one of the best approaches to reserve seasonal feeds, to decrease the load on pasture, and to increase soil fertility. The objective of this study was to determine the chemical compositions and fresh/dry forage yield of three varieties of Vicia spp. (Vicia narbonensis, narbon vetch, accession 2561; Vicia sativa, common vetch, accession 463; Vicia dasycarpa, woolly-pod vetch, accession 2446) at full blooming stage. The plants were grown under the climatic conditions of the province of Lorestan in Western Iran and were harvested at full blooming stage. Fresh and dry forage yields, as well as protein yield, were significantly higher (P<0.05) in narbon vetch (28847, 7366 and 1400 kg per hectare, respectively) than in woolly-pod (24825, 4884 and 1050 kg per hectare, respectively) and common vetch (20727, 6061 and 564 kg per hectare, respectively). Woolly-pod vetch had the highest content of crude protein (21.5%) and ash (12.3%), while common vetch had the highest content of neutral detergent fibre (43.9%). There was no difference in degraded dry matter (DDM) between the Vicia varieties in vitro. Results showed that all the Vicia varieties provide high quality forage for livestock, and can be recommended for cultivation because of their adaptability to the particular conditions of a region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]