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Implanted biomaterials

Sealing the heart from the inside out

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 7, pages 87–88 (2023)Cite this article

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Inflamed heart tissue after myocardial infarction can be repaired via an intravascularly infusible degradable matrix that binds to leaky vasculature.

Myocardial infarction (MI) can occur after severe atherosclerosis or when a clot stops blood flow in a coronary artery. Patients with acute MI typically receive emergency percutaneous coronary intervention to recanalize the blocked vasculature. However, fresh oxygenized arterial blood will strike the heart again during reperfusion1, causing extensive secondary damage and inflammation. Because the adult human heart has a fairly limited regenerative capability, a large scar caused by a heart attack cannot spontaneously heal, and may lead to heart failure.

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Fig. 1: An intravascularly infusible biomaterial for the repair of heart tissue.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences and Comparative Medicine Institute, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Ke Huang & Ke Cheng

  2. Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Ke Cheng

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  1. Ke Huang
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  2. Ke Cheng
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Correspondence to Ke Cheng.

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Huang, K., Cheng, K. Sealing the heart from the inside out. Nat. Biomed. Eng 7, 87–88 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-022-00981-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-022-00981-4

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