Tissue patch therapy for the heart after infarcts

Researchers are developing new tissue patch for the heart

05/04/2013

It still seems a futuristic dream, but researchers are in the process of developing a tissue patch for patients who have had a heart attack. The damaged heart should be brought back on track. However, the clinical use will be possible in a few years.

First development phase
At the annual conference of the German Society of Cardiologists in Mannheim, scientists from the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) announced that they are working on a tissue patch for the heart that is supposed to support the heart muscle after an infarction. Gerd Hasenfuss, Head of Cardiology at the University Medical Center Göttingen, said that the tissue could be sewn or glued onto the damaged heart. The research is still at an early stage and it will take a few years for the test to be used on humans. As in other areas of heart attack therapy, research and development is often tedious.

As Hasenfuß further explained, the researchers had already succeeded in designing special cell assemblies. With these, physicians could in the future use a "living patch" to bridge the destroyed artery of the heart muscle. This could improve cardiac performance. But still was "unknown how such a patch would actually behave".

Use only in the next decade
Hasenfuß, who is also on the board of DZHK, estimates that the procedure can be used at the earliest in ten years, if all tests are successful. Still being tested on rodents. Since cardiomyocytes die off in an infarct, researchers worldwide have been looking for years at ways to create new cells in the heart. First, attempts were made to introduce bone marrow stem cells into the heart so that they become cardiac cells and promote the regeneration of the heart, but all without much success. „That's off the table“, so hare foot. There were only positive effects for a short time. That's why other methods are now being tested by the scientists. Especially so-called reprogrammed cells (iPS cells) are now in the spotlight. These are, for example, "blood or skin cells that are placed in the adaptive state of a stem cell from which then in the laboratory heart muscle cells that mutate mutated into a tissue.

First results
It has already been possible to produce such cell assemblies, explained Hasenfuß. One day they will be applied as a kind of living patch on the destroyed part of the heart muscle to support the pumping work of the heart, so the goal. There are still uncertainties such as that the behavior of the cells in the association is not yet known, said Hasenfuß.

DZHK Congress
With Mannheim, the DZHK has seven locations nationwide. By Saturday, around 7500 experts will be able to find out about the latest findings in heart medicine at the congress there. (Ad)

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Image: Gerd Altmann, Pixelio.de