Biodegradable Patch: Congenital Heart Defect in Infants

Scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have developed a full-thickness, biodegradable patch that has the potential to treat congenital heart defect in neonates while reducing invasive operations and outlasting current patches.

The findings were published in the journal Materials Today this week.

The ultimate goal is to make lab-grown heart tissue from a patient’s own cells that can be used to restructure the heart to correct for heart defects.”

Jeffrey Jacot, PhD, study’s senior author, associate professor of bioengineering, University of Colorado School of Medicine

Approximately 10,000 infants are born annually in this country with a complex congenital heart defect, necessitating surgery within the first year of life. Some of these procedures involve the insertion of a full-thickness heart patch. However, the current patch materials are non-living and non-degradable, failing to adapt and integrate with the patient’s heart, often resulting in failure.

Jacot stated that these surgeries are primarily palliative, only prolonging survival until the next surgery. His laboratory’s patch, known as a tissue-engineered myocardial patch, has the potential to withstand the mechanical pressures of the heart wall and merge with the heart itself. Ideally, it could endure for the duration of the patient’s life.

“The current patch materials available to pediatric heart surgeons are exclusively non-living and non-degradable, which often fail in their long-term therapeutic efficacy due to low compliance, an increased risk of thrombosis and intimal hyperplasia, and their inability to remodel and integrate with the heart,” the study said.

Permanent repairs necessitate biomaterials that are biodegradable but also encourage heart regeneration, so that the patches are eventually replaced by healthy myocardium, the heart’s middle and thickest muscular layer.

“Any patches that are not replaced by healthy tissue prior to their degradation will inevitably fail and lead to long-term complications,” Jacot said.

The patch was generated in the lab using an electrospinning technology, in which electricity is used to liquid solutions to create nanofibers that are then utilized to make a’scaffold.’ Living cells are then inserted into the scaffold. This is finally turned into the patch.

“The scaffold was found to be mechanically sufficient for heart wall repair,” Jacot said. “Vascular cells were able to infiltrate more than halfway through the scaffold in static culture within three weeks.”

More testing is required before the patch may be utilized in humans.

Jacot believes it will play an important role in the treatment of congenital heart abnormalities and other cardiac disorders in the future.

“This is the first successful demonstration of a very thick, porous electrospun patch specifically for cardiac tissue engineering,” he said.