A muscle patch crafted from stem cells has improved cardiac function in monkeys with heart disease. It is now being tested in a small number of people, with early results from the first recipient suggesting it could treat advanced heart failure.
Heart failure – when the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands – usually occurs after a heart attack permanently damages or weakens the organ. Short of receiving a transplant or fitting a pump, no treatment can fully restore cardiac function, only slow its decline.
at the University of Göttingen in Germany and his colleagues generated heart muscle and connective tissue cells using pluripotent stem cells, which can transform into any cell type with the right mix of proteins and chemicals. These cells were then cultivated in a hydrogel mould for 28 days to create a 4-centimetre-by-4-centimetre patch, which contracts like regular heart muscle.
Advertisement
The researchers surgically implanted the patches into six monkeys with chronic heart failure, placing them over a damaged and scarred area of the animal’s heart. Half of the monkeys received two patches while the rest received five.
After six months, those with five patches had, on average, a more than 7 per cent increase in the amount of blood that their hearts could pump to the body with each beat. This measure declined by roughly 2.5 per cent in a separate group of seven monkeys that didn’t receive a patch, and there were no changes in those with two patches.
These results suggest that heart muscle patches could join the sparse treatments capable of restoring cardiovascular function in heart failure. In Germany, there are around 300 heart transplants and 1000 heart pumps installed each year, which isn’t enough to treat the roughly 200,000 people in the country with heart failure. “So 99 per cent of the patients that are in need of therapy are not adequately treated,” says Zimmermann. This patch, which doesn’t require a donor organ to make, could fill that treatment gap, he says.
The patches have already been implanted in 15 people with advanced heart failure. When one person had the rare opportunity to be matched with a donor 3 months after receiving the patch, it gave the researchers a chance to examine the excised heart. They found the patch’s cells had survived and integrated without side effects. While these results are exciting, they are preliminary, says Zimmermann, who expects data from the other participants by the end of the year.
Nature
