Advances in regenerative medicine are especially meaningful for heart attack survivors, who are vulnerable to complications from tissue damage incurred while their heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, were deprived of oxygenated blood. From the University of Minnesota, a new three-dimensional bioprinted heart patch is the latest move forward.
Whatever the cause, a heart attack results in a loss of blood to the heart muscle. This triggers a series of organ-wide effects: cells dying, scar tissue forming. Quickly attending to a person suffering a heart attack is a monumental factor in preventing long-term damage to the heart; scar tissue is not as flexible as the original muscle tissue, and increasing amounts of scar tissue replacing healthy heart tissue increases a person’s risk of heart failure later in life.
Many scientists are interested in developing and optimizing heart patch technology, but the present model is unique for its digitally-based design that mimics structural proteins of native heart tissue. The digital to physical transition happens via 3D printing with proteins native to the heart muscle and heart cells derived from stem cells.
University of Minnesota scientists tested the patch first in mice after manually triggering a heart attack. The patch cells successfully grew, “beat synchronously,” and accommodated the native heart cells, leading to a significant increase in “functional capacity” of the heart after about month.
"This is a significant step forward in treating the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S.," said University of Minnesota’s Brenda Ogle. "We feel that we could scale this up to repair hearts of larger animals and possibly even humans within the next several years."
Ogle and her team have filed a patent for their new technology, which could ultimately be clinically applied to people recovering from a heart attack, preventing tissue damage and negative side effects from scarred heart tissue.
Before being tested in humans, though, researchers will next apply this technology in pig hearts, which are closer in size to a human heart than are mouse hearts.