Heart Patch Offers Innovative Treatment Option for Advanced Heart Failure Patients

This milestone is a significant step forward for the clinical application of the ‘heart patch,’ an innovative treatment for severe heart failure, and is part of the translational research strategy by the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK, Berlin, Germany). The findings have been published in the prestigious journal Nature.

A groundbreaking approach in cardiac medicine is currently under investigation in the BioVAT-HF-DZHK20 clinical trial. Since the beginning of 2021, a multidisciplinary team of researchers has been exploring whether the ‘heart patch’ could offer a novel treatment for severe heart failure, also known as cardiac insufficiency. At present, there are no satisfactory treatment options available for this condition. The heart patch, made from lab-grown heart muscle tissue derived from stem cells, which includes both heart muscle cells and connective tissue, is intended to be applied to the weakened heart muscle to help it regain strength permanently.

The researchers have successfully implanted the ‘heart patch’ in patients with heart failure for the first time. Before initiating this clinical trial, the safety and effectiveness of the heart patch were thoroughly evaluated in animal models. A significant part of this evaluation involved testing the procedure in rhesus monkeys. The team demonstrated that heart patches, composed of 40 to 200 million cells, improved heart function by promoting heart muscle growth. Advanced imaging techniques and tissue analysis confirmed that the implanted heart muscle cells remain viable long-term and contribute to enhancing the heart's pumping ability. The results from these rhesus macaque studies provided a solid foundation for the first human application of heart repair using stem cell-derived engineered heart muscle.

“We were able to show in an animal model that the implantation of heart patches is suitable for the permanent reconstruction of the heart muscle in heart failure. The challenge was to obtain sufficient heart muscle cells from induced pluripotent stem cells from rhesus monkeys to achieve a sustainable repair of the heart without causing dangerous side effects such as cardiac arrhythmia or tumor growth,” said UMG Professor Dr. Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann. “The results of these investigations were decisive for the approval of the world's first clinical trial to repair the heart with tissue implants developed in the laboratory in people with advanced heart muscle weakness.”

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