Patients with end-stage heart failure often die waiting for a heart transplant. Today, a new engineered patch of heart muscle may extend their lives.
The engineered heart muscle patches are still in the clinical trial phase, with only 15 patients treated. But one of these patients was later given a heart transplant, allowing researchers to examine the engineered muscle graft on the patient’s original heart. Remarkably, they found that the patch was being fed by the patient’s blood supply, which supported the patient’s failing heart muscle. More importantly, that patient’s disease remained stable for the three months leading up to transplantation.
“We now have, for the first time, a laboratory-grown biological transplant available which has the potential to stabilize and strengthen the heart muscle,” says Ingo Kutschka, the director of the department of cardiothoracic surgery at Univ. Medical Center Göttingen, who performed the surgery.
60 million people worldwide have heart failure, and 10% of those are in the advanced stage, stresses Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmerman, the director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Univ. Medical Center Göttingen. Sadly, 99% of patients with heart failure die without receiving a transplant.
Doctors can implant...
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