2024-03-19 16:08:55
Unique in the world: As part of a study, patients with heart failure were implanted with a so-called heart patch. Initial tests now show: the therapy works.
People with severe heart disease and acute heart failure could benefit from a new treatment method in the future: Doctors at the University Hospitals of Göttingen and Schleswig-Holstein have developed a heart patch that is intended to repair weak hearts. A test patient is now reporting on his experiences.
Two years with a heart patch: patient describes experiences
“It’s like a new life” – that’s how Frank Teege describes the new treatment method for heart muscle weakness. For two years he has been wearing a so-called heart patch, which is being developed at the University Medical Center Göttingen and the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Lübeck. As part of a study, Teege was only one of twelve people worldwide to receive the heart patch. The scientists are convinced: it is a drug of the future.
Initial study results on the heart patch indicated its effectiveness, said the head of the pharmacology clinic at the University of Göttingen, Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann, who is also leading the test study. The safety of the drug is also solid.
Test patient: “I’m coming up mountains again”
Test patient Teege reports a newfound quality of life since the heart patch was inserted about two years ago. “I couldn’t climb any more mountains in Italy.” He knew then that something was wrong. Doctors found that his heart output was only 10 percent, now it’s back to 35. “Now I’m getting up the mountains again. It’s like repairing an engine,” said the former ship captain. “One could not necessarily expect that we would immediately have a therapeutic effect of this magnitude,” added Zimmermann.
For the treatment, the biotechnology company Repairon in Göttingen artificially produces heart muscle cells from stem cells, which in turn are obtained from umbilical cord blood cells. This creates small components made of heart muscle tissue, which are sewn together to form a so-called plaster and then sewn onto the weakened heart. The patch consists of 800 million young heart cells, is around 100 square centimeters in size and four millimeters thick. It is used minimally invasively in an operation lasting several hours.
“This is actually standard and will hopefully help make the therapy possible at other locations in the future,” said the director of the heart clinic at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Stephan Ensminger. What’s tricky is that the heart patch has to be sewn onto the beating heart without wrinkles.
Info: Heart failure (heart failure)
According to the German Heart Report from 2022, heart failure is the most common reason for a hospital stay, with around 400,000 annual hospital admissions. In ten percent of these cases, the disease is so serious that life expectancy is usually around twelve months despite optimized treatment. As society ages, the numbers are likely to continue to rise in the coming years.
Who the heart patch might be suitable for
The special thing about the treatment, which has been developed for 25 years, is that, unlike previous medications, it actually builds new muscles. “No pill can do that,” said Zimmermann. Immediately after insertion, the heart patch stabilizes the weakened heart, and cardiac performance is improved, especially within the first six to twelve months.
According to current knowledge, the heart patch is suitable for people who have exhausted other drug treatments but have not yet experienced organ failure. “In the future, a tissue transplant grown in the laboratory could become an alternative to mechanical cardiac support systems for some patients,” said Ingo Kutschka, director of the heart clinic at the University of Göttingen. It is also conceivable that the drug will be combined with other therapies in the future, such as bypass surgery.
Scientists want restricted approval
A total of twelve people, ten of them men and two women, have been treated with the drug in Göttingen and Lübeck as part of a study. Most of them had previously suffered a heart attack, which killed many of their four billion heart cells. The patch was then applied to the dead heart tissue. In a second study phase, another 35 people will be treated, explained study leader Zimmermann.
The drug is now to receive an exemption so that in certain cases it can be used at other locations worldwide. Other future goals include larger production quantities and heart patches that are not rejected by the body even without taking additional medication. Two people can currently be treated per month, and by 2026 there will be 60 to 100.