Hope for Broken Hearts

Biolife4D has achieved a milestone in its ultimate quest to develop human organs for transplant. The company recently announced that it has developed a cardiac patch using a highly specialized 3D printer designed to protect living cells during the printing process. The patch is designed to help patients recover heart function after an acute myocardial infarction, said Ravi Birla, PhD, the company’s chief science officer, in an interview with MD+DI. “Over several weeks, acute myocardial infarction results in scar formation and progresses to chronic heart failure, severely dampening cardiac output, the ability of the heart to pump blood,” said Birla. “The cardiac patch could limit the progression of acute heart failure toward chronic heart failure, thereby stabilizing the condition of the patients,” said Birla. He added that although the patch hasn’t been used in patients yet, he expects the technology to move to preclinical testing very soon. Birla explains that the human heart muscle consists of a hierarchical organization of contractile cells, structural components, and a complex vascular network. These individual functional parts act together to support heart muscle contraction. A specialized cell type is present within each area--cardiomyocytes for muscle contraction, vascular endothelial cells within the in...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: 3-D Printing Source Type: news