Health: Damaged heart repaired with tweaked tiss

[R. M. Dixit]

Breakthrough: Damaged heart repaired with tweaked tissue

May 9, 2011, 07.45am

Tags:

• National Academy of Sciences

WASHINGTON: In what's being claimed as a major breakthrough, scientists have pioneered a new method to patch a damaged heart using a tissueengineering platform that enables cardiac tissue to repair itself . A team at Columbia University has claimed that the breakthrough, published in the 'Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences' journal, is an important step forward in combating cardiovascular disease.
Led by Dr Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, the team developed a novel cell therapy to treat myocardial infarction �€” heart damage that follows a heart attack . They were able to combine the use of human repair cells that were conditioned during in-vitro culture to maximise their ability to revascularise and improve blood flow to the infarcted tissue with a fully biological composite scaffold designed to deliver these cells to the damaged heart.
With this platform, the scientists could both keep the cells within the infarct bed and enhance cell survival and function in infarct bed, where most of the cells would have died due to the obstruction of their blood supply. "This platform is very adaptable and we believe it could be readily extended to the delivery of other types of human stem cells we are interested in to rebuild the heart muscle," said Dr Novakovic.

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