Muscle patches manufactured with stem cells can help repair heart injuries such as cardiac insufficiencies without adverse effects, according to a study published Wednesday in the magazine ‘Nature’.
The effectiveness of these patches, called EHM, was demonstrated in primates and in a human patient during clinical trials that will continue to be carried out in real patients to “continue testing the safety and effectiveness of this approach”, according to an investigation led by The German scientist Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann. After obtaining favorable results, the first clinical trial has been authorized worldwide in human patients.
“The last findings highlight the potential of tissue patches derived from stem cells to treat heart failure,” a pathology that, according to this, “remains one of the main causes of death worldwide, while the options of treatment to reverse their evolution are limited. ”
The patch is made with tissue engineering, dedicated to repair or generate biological tissues, and is a cardiac muscle cultivated in a laboratory from heart cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells induced and embedded in a collagen hydrogel.
The simulation of this treatment in monkeys was the starting point for application in clinical trials, and places it as the only technology that allows “a safe and effective administration with long -term retention of cardiomiocytes (cardiac musculature cells)”.
The researchers managed to demonstrate that the implanted heart patches, composed of up to 200 million cells, improved cardiac function by forming a new heart muscle.
These new heart muscle cells are preserved under concomitant immunosuppression (weakening of the immune system) and reinforce the heart pumping function.
The study of the Medical Center of the University of Göttingen (center of Germany) and the Schleswig-Hostin University Medical Center in Lübeck (northern Germany) has participated in the study.
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