Patch to replace heart transplants?

Children's Hospital Boston has also been the center of new cardiovascular research. Another team there developed a patch that dispatches the growth stimulating protein periostin to damaged areas of heart muscle, spurring the growth of new tissue. Three months after insertion, the patch was still generating new protein while rats with induced heart attack damage had smaller injury areas and more blood vessels at work repairing damage. The researchers could also point to six million new cells, which outnumbered the cells destroyed by the heart attack. That same patch could be used to repair damaged hearts in adults or the hearts of children suffering from congenital cardiac issues. Researchers believe that this approach could eventually obviate the need for heart transplants.

- read the UPI report on the research

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