Researchers at the University of Manchester have invented a body-safe gel that can be injected into a living heart to support the growth of new tissue. Cardiac arrest occurs about once every five minutes in the United Kingdom and once every 36 seconds here in the United States. While more people survive these days than ever before, each instance results in significant damage that can lead to future health complications.
The heart has a hard time healing on its own; after about a week it stops recruiting resources from the rest of the body, leaving a large portion of the damage unresolved. This means it’s up to the medical field to find ways to boost cell regeneration and promote the growth of healthy tissue. Stem cell therapy is perhaps the most promising strategy to this end, yet it still leaves much to be desired: doctors inject stem cells from a donor or the patient’s own body into the patient’s heart with the goal of reducing fatal arrest in the future. But an extremely small percentage of those stem cells actually “stick.” With a gel like the one just announced, the cells have a better chance of staying in place.
(Photo: Robina Weermeijer/Unsplash)
The gel is made of peptides, or chains of amino acids that make up proteins. Thanks to the flexibility of these peptides’ bonds, scientists can choose whether to use the gel as a liquid (by putting the gel under stress) or a solid (by removing stress). The gel is injected into the heart in its liquid form, then returned to a more solid substance as it helps new cells graft.
So far, the researchers have used the gel in healthy mice to test its viability in living hearts. They’ve also proven the gel’s effectiveness by using it to grow reprogrammed heart cells in a dish for three weeks at a time. Next they plan on testing it in mice that have already endured cardiac arrest.
“While it’s still early days, the potential this new technology has in helping to repair failing hearts after a heart attack is huge,” said lead researcher Katherine King, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, in the institution’s statement. “We’re confident that this gel will be an effective option for future cell-based therapies to help the damaged heart to regenerate.”
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