British researchers have developed a biodegradable gel to repair damage caused by a heart attack, a breakthrough that could improve the health of millions of survivors worldwide.
In the UK alone, there are more than 100,000 hospitalizations for heart attacks each year – once every five minutes. Medical advances have left more people alive than ever before, with 1.4 million Britons alive today after a heart attack. But hearts have a very limited ability to regenerate, meaning survivors are at risk of developing heart failure and other health problems.
Now, after years of efforts to find solutions to help the heart repair itself, researchers at the University of Manchester have developed a gel that can be injected directly into a beating heart — effective as a scaffold to help the injected cells create new tissue. to grow.
Until now, when the cells were injected into the heart to reduce the risk of heart failure, only 1% remained in place and survived. But the gel can hold them in place while they are grafted onto the heart.
“While it is still early days, the potential of this new technology to help failing hearts recover after a heart attack is huge,” said Catherine King, who led the research supported by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). “We are confident that this gel will be an effective option for future cell-based therapies to help regenerate the damaged heart.
To prove that the technology could work, the researchers showed that the gel could support the growth of normal heart muscle tissue. When they added human cells that had been reprogrammed to become cardiomyocytes in the gel, they were able to grow in a dish for three weeks and the cells started beating spontaneously.
Echocardiograms (ultrasound of the heart) and electrocardiograms (ECGs, which measure the electrical activity of the heart) on mice confirmed the integrity of the gel. To gain more knowledge, the researchers will test the gel after mice have had a heart attack to show that they develop new muscle tissue.
The study will be presented at the British Cardiovascular Society conference in Manchester.
Professor James Lieber, Associate Medical Director at the BHF, said: “We have come a long way in our ability to treat heart attacks and today more people are surviving than ever before. However, this also means that more people will survive heart damage. and at risk of heart failure.
“This new injectable technology takes advantage of the natural properties of peptides to potentially solve one of the problems that has held up this type of treatment for years. If the benefits are replicated in further research and subsequently in patients, these gels could become an important component in future treatments to repair damage caused by seizure cardiomyopathy;
And separate research presented at the same conference found that obesity can cause hearts to fail and weaken their structures.
The largest study of its kind in 490,000 people found that people with a higher BMI and waist-to-hip ratio had a 30% chance of heart failure. These risks occurred regardless of other heart failure risks, such as diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol.
dr. Zahra Raeesi Estberg, of Queen Mary University of London, who led the study, said: “We already know that obesity increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases that can cause heart failure. But we’ve now revealed that obesity itself may be a trigger for heart failure. hearts”.