Science to mend a broken heart
8 Dec 2008 by Evoluted New Media
Science could mend your broken heart - unfortunately for romantics everywhere, not the type caused by cheating partners - but if you are in need of some extra heart tissue then researchers from MIT may have the answer.
Science could mend your broken heart - unfortunately for romantics everywhere, not the type caused by cheating partners - but if you are in need of some extra heart tissue then researchers from MIT may have the answer.
Patients with tissue damage from heart attacks or heart defects could be treated by biodegradable scaffold which would be gradually absorbed into the body leaving behind new tissue. The scaffold or “patch” would be attached to the damaged heart and then electrical signals designed to mimic those in the heart are applied to initiate rapid assembly of functional tissue.
Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic who led the research said: “Think of it as a patch for a broken heart.”
Tests on rats have produced persuasive results that indicate a remarkable matching of structural and mechanical properties of the native heart tissue. This is a step change from previous tissue engineering scaffold attempts.
The group’s next challenge is to reproduce their results with human cells and test how it works in the body. In the future they hope to apply their technology to other tissue types. Dr Lisa Freed who worked closely on the project said “In the long term we’d like to have a whole library of scaffolds for different tissues in need of repair.”
The research is published in Nature Materials.
By Leila Sattary
