Engineered muscle patch fixed failing hearts in an early study

By its name and nature, heart failure doesn’t have a good outlook. The progressive disease is diagnosed when the heart is no longer able to pump blood and oxygen throughout the body as well as it should, limiting daily activities and lifespan. Medications have improved at easing its symptoms, including obesity drugs that appear to work by reducing weight and fat, but researchers have long sought a more direct  repair of heart failure’s damage.

Now a lab-grown patch of heart muscle engineered from induced pluripotent stem cells may hold promise. A paper published Wednesday in Nature describes success in rhesus macaques and in one patient who later received a heart transplant. Fifteen people with advanced heart failure are now enrolled in a late-stage clinical trial led by teams at the University Medical Center Göttingen and University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck in Germany. 

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