Injectable Gel Could Repair Tissue Damaged By Heart Attack

Researcher at the University of California, San Diego have come up with a new hydrogel that could be a safe treatment for tissue damage caused by heart attacks. There are an estimated 785,000 new heart attack cases in the United States each year, with no treatment for repairing the resulting damage. This new injectable gel could change that.

The hydrogel is made from cardiac connective tissues that goes through cleansing to get rid of the heart muscle cells. the tissue spins in a beaker at the end of the cleansing process that removes all of the cells. The process retains the tissue's structural proteins. The tissue is then frozen and milled into powder, and then liquified into a fluid. Once the fluid is inserted into the heart and reaches body temperature, it turns into a semi-solid, porous gel that encourages cells to come to the area of damage. The gel works as a scaffold to repair the tissues, and could maybe send chemicals that prevent further damage to the surrounding areas.

Work by the research team suggests that the gel can improve heart function in pigs with cardiac damage, which brings this treatment one step closer to humans since a pig's heart is similar in size and anatomy to a human heart. In the experiments done on rats, the gel was not rejected by the body, and it did not trigger arrhythmic heart beating. The gel could be used in clinical trials within next year.

http://www.be.ucsd.edu/news