Heart patch? Incredible as it sounds, specialists at North Carolina State University have developed a patch that can help treat a damaged heart in patients who have had a heart attack. The innovative invention has already helped pigs and rats.
A patch for the treatment of the heart
Heart patches are being investigated as a promising means of delivering cells that could regenerate a heart muscle damaged by an infarction.
However, those developed so far are expensive, take a long time to prepare and are easily damaged. In addition, because living cells are placed on them, there is a risk of cancer.
A team at North Carolina State University took a different approach.
The patch developed by the scientists – made of the cell-free tissue of the pig’s heart muscle – contains only substances secreted by certain specific cells that help in the regeneration of the muscle.
– We have developed a synthetic patch on the heartthat has the potential to solve the problems associated with the use of living cells while still offering effective cell therapy at the site of damage, says Prof. Ke Cheng, author of the invention described in the pages of Science Translational Medicine.
First, scientists checked the patch on rats after a heart attack. The patch improved their heart function by an average of 50 percent. in three weeks and reduced the extent of scars by 30%.
Researchers also conducted a seven-day pilot pig test. They again saw a 30 percent reduction in scarring and an improvement in heart function.
Experiments have also shown that previously frozen slices work with the same effectiveness.
– The patch can be frozen and safely stored for at least 30 days, and because there are no living cells in it, it will not cause rejection by the patient’s immune system. This is the first step towards a truly readily available patch for heart treatment – says Prof. Cheng.
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