科学家开发出了一种大鼠心脏的“补丁”，它可以在活组织内部培养，然后移植到宿主动物的心脏中从而修复肌肉组织。用新的细胞修补心脏可以有助于该器官的复原并增强其功能——心脏在经历了心脏病发作的损伤之后无法让细胞再生。
Smadar Cohen 及其同事开发出了一种把在实验室中生长的细胞转移到受伤的心脏中的方法，该方法还包括利用身体作为生物反应器的一个中间步骤。这组科学家用新生大鼠心脏细胞和一组生长因子构成了基本的框架。在48小时后，他们把这个心脏补丁移植到了大鼠腹部内部。在7天的时间里，浸在生长因子中的这个补丁在腹部网膜的血管丰富的组织上培养。这一中间过程可以让这个补丁发育出存活和产生功能所需的毛细血管网和肌纤维。一旦植入心脏，这个补丁就继续发育，并与大鼠心脏组织结合起来。这组作者说，在28天后，与对照组相比，这些实验动物在经过修补的心脏区域出现了更广泛的血管形成，而且修复的组织把它的细胞冲动节律与原来的临近细胞的节律连接了起来。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
PNAS August 24, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812242106
Prevascularization of cardiac patch on the omentum improves its therapeutic outcome
Tal Dvira, Alon Kedemb, Emil Ruvinova, Oren Levyc, Inbar Freemana, Natalie Landad, Radka Holbovad, Micha S. Feinbergd, Shani Drore, Yoram Etzione, Jonathan Leord and Smadar Cohena,1
aDepartment of Biotechnology Engineering and
cDepartment of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105;
bDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology and
dNeufeld Cardiac Research Institute, Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Hashomer, Israel 52621; and
eCardiac Arrhythmia Research Laboratory, Soroka University Medical Center, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105
The recent progress made in the bioengineering of cardiac patches offers a new therapeutic modality for regenerating the myocardium after myocardial infarction (MI). We present here a strategy for the engineering of a cardiac patch with mature vasculature by heterotopic transplantation onto the omentum. The patch was constructed by seeding neonatal cardiac cells with a mixture of prosurvival and angiogenic factors into an alginate scaffold capable of factor binding and sustained release. After 48 h in culture, the patch was vascularized for 7 days on the omentum, then explanted and transplanted onto infarcted rat hearts, 7 days after MI induction. When evaluated 28 days later, the vascularized cardiac patch showed structural and electrical integration into host myocardium. Moreover, the vascularized patch induced thicker scars, prevented further dilatation of the chamber and ventricular dysfunction. Thus, our study provides evidence that grafting prevascularized cardiac patch into infarct can improve cardiac function after MI.
