Hydrogel patch mitigates heart attack damage

An international team of scientists and engineers has developed a hydrogel patch specifically modelled to reduce damage to the heart in the aftermath of a heart attack.

Published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the work is a collaboration between China’s Soochow and Fudan Universities and Brown University in the US. The team created an adhesive patch made from food starch that can be placed directly on to the heart. On testing in rats, the patch was shown to prevent left ventricle remodelling - a stretching of the heart muscle that's common after a heart attack and can reduce the function of the heart's main pumping chamber.

"Part of the reason that it's hard for the heart to recover after a heart attack is that it has to keep pumping," said Huajian Gao, a professor of engineering at Brown and a co-author on the paper. "The idea here is to provide mechanical support for damaged tissue, which hopefully gives it a chance to heal."