Duke
University Heart Patch Shows Promise in
Repairing Cardiac Tissue Damage
Researchers at
Duke University have developed an artificially-engineered
Patch consisting of fully functional human
Heart muscle
Tissue that can be used to repair damaged areas of the heart. While it’s not the first
Cardiac Tissue to be artificially engineered, it’s significant in that it’s the first that is large enough to be clinically useful to cover an affected area of the
Heart while being strong enough and as electrically active as native
Heart tissue.
The
Duke Heart Patch is created similarly to other artificially-engineered
Cardiac tissues: human pluripotent stem cells are injected into a support structure and are supplied with nutrients and growth factors. Under specific conditions, the stem cells can differentiate into cardiomyocytes and other types of tissues found in the heart. Researchers were successful in growing a
Patch 2.5 square inches (16 square cm) and five to eight cells thick in size that resembled native
Cardiac Tissue in structure and was fully functional both electrically and mechanically.
Moreover, after implanting the
Heart patches onto rat and mouse hearts, the researchers saw that the patches maintained their function and became vascularized and integrated with the heart’s native tissues.
Here’s a short video showing off the new
Heart patch:
Journal abstract in
Nature Communications:
Cardiopatch platform enables maturation and scale-up of human pluripotent stem cell-derived engineered heart tissues…
Via Duke:
Beating Heart Patch is Large Enough to Repair the Human Heart…
