Scientists develop a patch from blood -taken cells and “Reprogrammed” In cardiac muscle cells, which can help patients with heart failure, according to The Guardian.
Innovation is considered a “revolutionary” one. Photo shutterstock
Damaged hearts can be “Literally peticated to help them work”, Say the researchers, according to the quoted source.
A recent study shows that heart failure affects over 64 million people worldwide, causes including heart attacks, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease.
For heart transplants there is a shortage of organs available, while artificial cardiac pumps are expensive and have a number of complications.
“It has the potential to stabilize and strengthen the cardiac muscle”
Creation of implantable patches made from blood -taken cells and “Reprogrammed” To act as stem cells – which can develop in any type of cell in the body – they can help the organ to contract.
“We now have, for the first time, an increased biological transplant in the laboratory, which has the potential to stabilize and strengthen the cardiac muscle”, explained Prof. Ingo Kutschka, from the Göttingen University Medical Center in Germany, co -author of the work.
Basically, cells are transformed into cells of cardiac muscle and connective tissue. They are incorporated into a collagen gel and cultivated in a personalized mold, before the resulting hexagonal patches are fixed, in the series, on a membrane.
For humans, this membrane has a dimension of about 5 cm per 10 cm.
According to Professor Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann, co-author of the work, the patches of patches has the characteristics of a heart corresponding to an age between four and eight.
“We implant young muscles in patients with heart failure“He said.
The use of such patch is an important evolution, compared to the direct injection of the heart muscle cells, which can lead to the development of tumors or the appearance of an irregular, sometimes fatal heartbeat.
The patches allow the administration of a much larger number of cardiac muscle cells, with a higher retention and, it seems, without the risk of such unwanted effects.
Zimmermann’s colleagues reported in Nature magazine that they tested the patch on healthy monkeys without finding evidence of irregular heartbeat, tumor formation, deaths or diseases.
