Vishnupriya
In a scientific breakthrough that will help advanced heart failure patients, a lab-grown patch for mending damaged hearts has been developed. Talking about their recent invention in the journal Nature, scientists say they have designed implantable patches composed of beating heart muscle that can help the organ contract and can potentially stabilize and strengthen the heart muscle.
Who needs these patches?
The patches have the potential to strengthen the heart muscles of advanced heart failure and provide them support.
How these patches work
According to the research, blood cells are taken from the body and reprogrammed to mimic stem cells, so that they can develop into any cell type.
The stem cells are turned into heart muscle cells and connective tissue cells.
Cells are combined with collagen gel and grown in a custom mould to make a heart patch. This is ready to be implanted onto a damaged heart.
Prof Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann, an author of the work from University Medical Center Göttingen, said “we are implanting young muscle into patients with heart failure.” The muscle in the patches had the traits of a heart just four to eight years old.
“We are implanting young muscle into patients with heart failure,” he said.
The research team also discussed the risks of directly injecting heart muscle cells into the heart which can lead to tumours or irregular heartbeat and stressed upon the importance of heart patches that allow many more heart muscle cells to be administered with higher retention, eliminating the deadly side effects.
Test on animals
The researchers mention in their study how they tested the patches in healthy rhesus macaques and found no evidence of irregular heartbeats, tumour formation, or deaths or disease related to the patches. When the hearts of the animals were studied after six months post the patches were implanted, they found a thickening of the heart wall. The patches were also tested in monkeys who had a disease similar to chronic heart failure. The team noticed improvement in heart function and the heart wall contracted better.
Test on humans
Researchers then used the technique on a 46-year-old woman with advanced heart failure. The patches in this case were devised using human cells from a donor and were sutured onto the patient’s beating heart with minimally invasive surgery.
After three months, patient’s heart remained stable and thereafter a heart transplant as done which gave team the opportunity to analyse the removed heart. The researchers to their delight found the patches had survived and a blood supply had developed.
Using donor cells requires immune suppression, but researchers say creating patches from a patient’s own cells would be too costly and time-consuming. Donor cells also allow for “off-the-shelf” patches and better safety testing.
The team also said that the patches may take three-six months time to function well and may not be suitable for all patients. They mentioned that 15 patients have already received the patches.
The trial is ongoing and scientists are hoping these patches will boost cardiac function in their patients. The scientists added that the idea is not to replace heart transplants, but “it is offering a novel treatment to patients that are presently under palliative care and that have a mortality of 50% within 12 months.”
