A heart attack happens when a clogged artery blocks blood flow to the heart muscle. When this happens, the heart is starved of vital nutrients and oxygen, killing off parts of the heart muscle. This weakens the heart and can damage the heart’s pumping power, eventually resulting in heart failure. Around 920,000 people in the UK alone suffer this fate.
Until recently, there hasn’t been a way to treat a weakened heart. But now, scientists have developed a “pumping” patch containing millions of living, beating stem cells that could help repair the damage caused by a heart attack. The patches are intended to physically support the damaged heart muscle and help it pump more efficiently. It also releases chemicals that stimulate the heart cells to repair and regenerate.
The Heart Patch
One thumb-sized (3cm x 2cm) patch of heart tissue contain up to 50 million human stem cells. It is grown in a lab from a sample of the patient’s own cells. Next, it is sewn onto the patient’s heart where it then turns itself into a healthy working muscle. One or more patches could be implanted on to the heart of someone who has had a heart attack to prevent or even reverse damage to the organ.
Testing
In the lab, tests show that the patches start to beat after three days and start to mimic mature heart tissue within a month. In animals, the patches led to an improvement in the function of the heart after a heart attack. Most impressively, blood vessels from the heart were able to grow into the patches.
The cells (patches) implanted into rabbits’ hearts began regenerating and the heart pumped more efficiently. The left ventricle of the rabbit hearts, responsible for pumping blood out into the body, were rebuilding without forming abnormal heart rhythms in as little as four weeks!
Scientists from Imperial College London believe it’s now safe to test the patches in human clinical trials since the lab results and testing on rabbits was so successful. They already presented their encouraging findings at the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) Conference in Manchester, England.
They say patient trials should start sometime in the next two years. What they plan to do next is to see if the patches can help patients suffering from otherwise incurable heart failure.
Professor Metin Avkiran, an associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which is funding the research, said:
This is a prime example of world-leading research that has the potential to mend broken hearts and transform lives around the globe. If clinical trials can show the benefits of these heart patches in people after a heart attack, it would be a great leap forward for regenerative medicine. Heart failure is a debilitating and life-changing condition with no cure, making everyday tasks incredibly difficult. If we can patch the heart up and help it heal, we could transform the outlook for these people.
Conclusion
If all goes well and the patches pass the human trials, the scientists envision hospitals having a stock of pre-made patches that are compatible with all patients, so that a person suffering a heart attack could quickly have one implanted. Their goal is to make this vision a reality.
Dr. Richard Jabbour, from the London BHF Centre of Regenerative Medicine, said:
One day we hope to add heart patches to the treatments that doctors can routinely offer people after a heart attack. We could prescribe one of these patches alongside medicines for someone with heart failure, which you could take from a shelf and implant straight into a person.
