At Shrink, we say that when you get a “boo-boo” on your arm you put a band-aid on it. In the future, when you get a “boo-boo” on your heart, you’ll be able to grow your own cardiac muscle tissue into a band-aid structure and use it to repair your heart. This is not science fiction and there are leading edge scientists who are making this into a reality for future Americans and people around the world.
Dr. Kenneth Chien of Harvard has grown a thin, beating strip of mouse muscle cells that may someday be used to regenerate damaged hearts. “We’re making a heart part, and (eventually) we’re going to put the part in” says Chien. Right now, though, the part is just a thin film of muscle – the next step is growing a thick, 3D patch. “We’re not saying this is going to happen tomorrow,” states Dr. Chien, “but I believe within five years.”
Myocardial Infarction, better known as a heart attack, stops blood and oxygen from reaching the heart. After just a few minutes without oxygen, heart cells start to die, leaving the heart permanently broken. Doctors can usually prevent heart attacks, but don’t have any way to clean up the aftermath. Heart attack survivors are prone to congestive heart failure, which afflicts 4.8 million Americans, a chronic condition where damaged heart can’t pump blood properly and usually ends in lethal heart failure. Something like Dr. Chien’s replacement could one day restore these hearts to full function.
At Shrink, we are developing new technologies to help researchers save lives. Our research laboratories have grown beating heart muscle on our CellAlign™ substrate, which uses nanotechnology to coax stem cells into forming certain types of tissue. Here are some amazing videos of mouse model heart tissue which were grown on our CellAlign™ substrate. Take a look at the beating “living” tissue here.
Creating specialized cardiac patches are the goal of many researchers in order to repair damaged heart. The research community is hot on the path to making this science into a therapy, although there is significant work to be done. But in the future, it is Shrink’s hope that individualized cardiac tissues will be developed on the CellAlign™ platform, ultimately for implantation into or onto an injured person’s heart.
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