Heart Healing Patch

With a family history of heart disease, the possibility of regenerating heart cells damaged from a heart attack brings new hope to the recovery process. Recent discoveries have led to the development of this regenerative treatment.

It has long been known that if the beating muscle cells of the heart, cardiomyocytes, are damaged they don't normally regrow. But pediatric cardiologist Bernhard Kuhn of Children’s Hospital Boston and his colleagues discovered that a protein we're born with can prompt adult heart cells of rats to regenerate. This protein is called periostin. Scientists know our bodies have high levels of this protein before we’re born, but levels decrease soon after birth. One significant affect of periostin on the heart is it increases the in-growth of new vessels.

He also thinks it may one day be possible to administer this treatment without major surgery by using cardiac catheterization: delivery via a thin tube that is inserted into a blood vessel and runs to the heart.

There is a big jump from procedures working on rats to procedures working on humans, but at least the further development of our knowledge for cardiac proteins will bring us that much closer to new discoveries.