Though sufferers of heart attack can survive the initial
event, they cause permanent damage to the organ in form of scar tissue, which
affects its ability to pump blood.
Scientists around the world are working on this problem,
with hydro-gels, human stem cells and even bio-engineered tissues that sticks
together offering possible solutions.
But the latest promising advanced comes from a team of
researchers that has developed a simple protein patch that can restore animal
hearts almost to the normal function.
The team’s work was guided by earlier research indicating
that the outside layer of the heart may be responsible for producing the
compounds that regenerates heart muscle in fish. The effort was lead by Prof.
Pilar Ruiz-Lozano at Stanford University and involved scientists from
university of California, San Diego.
In studying the
epicardial-outer layer of the heart- the team was able to demonstrate that they
indeed cause existing heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, to multiply.
But the team then sought to narrow things down even further and determine
whether a single compound might be driving the process. Using mass
spectrometry, the team uncovered more than 300 proteins as possible candidates,
and eventually whittled this down to one using high-throughput assays.
Once the researchers identified Follistatin –like 1(FSTL1)
as the protein they had been searching for, they went on to develop the
therapeutic patch made from collagen that incorporated this compound. The patch
was designed to have the same electricity as fetal heart tissue and gradually
release protein over time. It was applied to the surface of mouse and pig
hearts that had suffered from attacks and was found to drive tissue
regeneration.
In pigs that had suffered from a heart attack, blood pumped
out of the left ventricle was reduced from the normal 50 percent to 30 percent.
But surgically applying the patch on the surface of the heart for a week after
the event saw this restored to 40 percent, where it remained stable. The patch
was also found to considerably reducing scarring of the pig heart tissue.
This can be a new hope for those suffering from heart
disease.
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