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First developed patch for patients with heart failure
Cardiac insufficiency is one of the most common fatal diseases. German researchers have now succeeded in producing a special patch for the reconstruction of lost heart muscle tissue.
One of the most common fatal diseases
Cardiac insufficiency affects more than 20 million people worldwide and is one of the most common fatal diseases. In recent years, new approaches to the treatment of heart failure have been reported repeatedly. For example, scientists at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) found that some patients could help with more iron because it makes the heart more resilient. Researchers from Göttingen now report another possibility: A patch for the reconstruction of lost heart muscle tissue.
Cardiac insufficiency is one of the most common fatal diseases. The number of patients will continue to increase due to demographic change. German researchers have now made a patch for the reconstruction of lost heart muscle tissue. (Image: psdesign1 / fotolia.com) Number of patients with heart failure will increase
As stated in a statement of the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), previous therapeutic approaches can slow down the course of the disease, but not repair the heart.
As the number of patients with cardiac insufficiency continues to increase due to demographic change, the development of new reparative therapies is of particular importance.
Researchers of the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) at the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Göttingen, now claims to have succeeded for the first time, so-called heart plasters or "Engineered Heart Muscle" (EHM) for the reconstruction of lost Produce heart muscle tissue under conditions suitable for clinical use.
Beating heart patches made
The scientists have developed the manufacturing conditions for EHM to such an extent that an examination of EHM in patients with cardiac insufficiency seems feasible for the first time in controlled clinical trials.
By using 3D printing techniques, it has also been possible to produce beating heart plasters in the size and shape necessary for patients with cardiac insufficiency. This shows the EHM characteristics of the adult heart, which were previously not to achieve in the laboratory.
This includes, among other things, an increase in cardiac output as the heart rate increases; a mechanism that is detectable in every healthy person and is lost in heart failure. The method and first exemplary applications in the field of drug testing and cardiac repair have now been published in the journal "Circulation".
Decisive breakthrough
"The highly defined culture conditions that we have developed are, in our view, a decisive breakthrough for use in drug development as well as cardiac repair," said lead author Dr. Painted Tiburcy from the UMG.
Prof. Dr. Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann, director of the UMG's Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology and senior author of the publication, added: "Based on the procedure we have developed, we are currently preparing the world's first clinical study of cardiac pacemaker cardiac muscle repair in patients with cardiac insufficiency. "
Without endangering patients
As the experts explain, the concept of heart repair is based on the accurate fitting of beating heart muscle tissue from the laboratory into the diseased heart.
For drug development, the cardiac-like stable function and the ability to simulate cardiac insufficiency with typical clinical side effects (loss of power, cell death, biomarker release) are of central importance.
"Especially for the development of effective and safe medicines, human testing by the method developed at the UMG is also possible without endangering subjects and patients," he said.
Cardiac muscle cells are obtained from human pluripotent stem cells and mixed with connective tissue cells in collagen. In 3D-printed culture forms can thus produce heart muscle tissue with different shape and function.
The function of the cardiac tissue developed by the Göttingen researchers can be tracked with the naked eye without the aid of microscopes, whereby the classical properties of human heart tissue become visible and measurable. This is central to their use in drug development and cardiac repair, according to scientists. (Ad)