Human tissue and gold nanoparticles form patch for damaged hearts

The work, led by Dr Tal Dvir and his graduate student Michal Shevach, is predicated around heart tissue that is unable to repair itself after heart attack, a situation brought about because heart cells cannot multiply and cardiac muscles contain few stem cells.

Whilst searching for methods to restore heart function, especially cardiac ‘patches’ that could be transplanted into the body to replace damaged heart tissue, Dr Dvir and his team discovered that gold particles are able to increase the conductivity of biomaterials.

In a study published by Nano Letters, Dr Dvir’s team presented their model for a hybrid cardiac patch, which incorporates biomaterial harvested from patients and gold nanoparticles.

‘Our goal was twofold,’ Dr Dvir said in a statement. ‘To engineer tissue that would not trigger an immune response in the patient, and to fabricate a functional patch not beset by signalling or conductivity problems.’

Cardiac tissue is engineered by allowing cells, taken from the patient or other sources, to grow on a three-dimensional scaffold, similar to the collagen grid that naturally supports the cells in the heart.