A patch for broken hearts
A BIOLOGICAL patch that could repair a damaged heart is being developed in groundbreaking Australian research that uses stem cells to grow new heart muscle.
The heart muscle is damaged in heart attacks and heart failure, and one in two people with heart failure will die within a year, so a remedy that repairs the damage is lifesaving. It could even eliminate the need for some transplants.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in this country, killing 18,500 Australians a year — one every 28 minutes.
Westmead Hospital cardiologist James Chong has used stem-cell transplants to repair the hearts of monkeys and is seeking ways to ensure the new heart muscle does not cause arrhythmias or tumours so it can be trialled in humans.
His research into regenerating the heart started with funding from the Heart Foundation, which supported his PhD at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
One of the biggest barriers is developing blood vessels that graft on to the cardiac stem cell patches so they grow and integrate with human hearts.
Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina, who is working with Dr Chong, has developed a silk thread that acts as scaffolding to grow the stem cells that could be transplanted to repair damaged heart muscle.
Dr Rnjak-Kovacina is using a $400,000, four-year Heart Foundation Future Leader fellowship to perfect the way cardiac patches are integrated with damaged hearts and is researching the way body tissue develops capillaries.
“The idea behind the patch is essentially to replace the bit think, otherwise work,” she said.
“We’ve had lots of challenges, but that’s natural, we have always stayed together.
“I think you’ve got to discuss things with each other it doesn’t of the heart that has died with a living tissue that we’ve grown in the lab,” she said.
“We can now grow human tissue analogs in the lab, so we can take a material like silk, we can isolate cells and then seed them on to the silk.
“However, those tissues don’t have capillaries, which means they don’t have a blood supply.”
Overcoming this issue is the focus of her work but she warns translating the research into practice may take 10 years.
The heart has a limited capacity to repair itself after heart attack or heart failure. This means many Australians need transplants.
On September 18, the foundation’s Give With Heart Day aims to raise $3.5 million for research in a fundraising drive.
This year, your donation will be quadrupled by other Heart Foundation donors.