A patch that could help heal broken hearts

According to the American Heart Association, heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide in recent years. During a heart attack, or myocardial infarction (MI), a blocked artery and the resulting oxygen deprivation cause massive cardiac cell death, blood vessel impairment and inflammation. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering have developed a cardiac patch with tiny engineered blood vessels that improved recovery from MI in rats and pigs.

To effectively treat MI, lost heart muscle tissue must regenerate and new blood vessels must form to restore oxygen and nutrients to cells. Scientists have tried to develop patches containing various therapeutic cells to treat MI, but so far most have been too cumbersome to make, or they don’t restore both cardiac muscle and blood supply to the injured site. Ke Cheng and colleagues previously developed a relatively easy-to-make pre-vascularized cardiac patch, which contained engineered microvessels in a fibrin gel spiked with cardiac stromal cells. When implanted into rats after an MI, the cells in the patch secreted growth factors that made cardiac muscle and blood vessels regrow. Now, the researchers wanted to test the patch further in rats, as well as in pigs, which have cardiovascular systems more similar to humans than those of rodents.

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