Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Rat Hearts Healed by a Protein-rich Gel

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

John Hopkins researchers  created a sticky protein rich gel which appear to help stem cells stay on or in rat hearts and have the ability to restore metabolism after transplantation in addition to improving cardiac function after simulated heart attacks.  When the heart beats, it pushes cells injected into the heart wall out in the lungs before they get a chance to attach to the wall.  John Hopkins researchers applied a hydrogel to the beating rat hearts to improve cell stem uptake to the heart muscle and speed up tissue healing after the heart attack.

By mixing these two components, the researchers created a sticky gel that functioned as a synthetic stem cell niche: It encapsulated stem cells while nurturing them and rapidly restored their metabolism.

Their tests showed that encapsulated stem embryonic and adult stem cells survived at levels near 100 percent but still proliferated and survived for days.  According to their article being published in December 2015 issue of Biomaterials, when cell-gel combination was injected into the living hearts about 73% of cells were retained in the hearts after an hour and for the seven days the cells encapsulated into the hydrogel increased in number.

In rat models of heart attack damage, Abraham’s team shows that the hydrogel with encapsulated cells improved pumping efficiency of the left ventricle over the four weeks after injection by 15 percent, compared with 8 percent from cells in solution.  Abraham’s group showed that even injections of the hydrogel by itself improved heart function and increased the number of blood vessels in the region of the heart attack.