Heart failure is a big health problem affecting millions of people worldwide. It happens when the heart can’t pump enough blood to the rest of the body.
The bad news is, we don’t have a cure yet. We can only manage the symptoms, but often the treatments come with side effects.
In severe cases, patients may need surgeries or even heart transplants, but these can lead to more health problems.
The Root Cause: Cardiac Fibrosis
One of the main reasons behind heart failure is something called cardiac fibrosis. This condition is like a wound that never heals.
Instead, it forms stiff scar tissue around the heart. This “scar” prevents the heart from beating correctly.
Unfortunately, not much focus has been put on treating cardiac fibrosis, even though it could be a key to helping people with heart failure.
Building a Better Model: New Research Aims to Improve
Until now, we haven’t had good ways to test potential treatments for cardiac fibrosis.
The models we have used are either based on animal cells, which are different from human cells, or they use a jelly-like material that doesn’t mimic the structure of the scarred heart tissue.
But a team of scientists led by Gerardina Ruocco, Irene Carmagnola, and Valeria Chiono decided to make a better model.
They wanted to make a model that is more similar to human cardiac fibrotic tissue. This way, they can test new treatments more accurately and quickly.
The New Model: How It Works
To make the new model, the researchers used a technique called electrospinning to create a network of tiny, randomly arranged fibers.
These fibers were made from a material that can break down naturally in the body.
The researchers then dipped this network into a mix of collagen and fibronectin, two substances that are part of the environment of the heart and are involved in the development of fibrosis.
The researchers then put human heart cells onto this scaffold. Under the right conditions, these cells change into a type of cell called myofibroblasts that make the scar tissue.
In the past, scientists needed to add special growth factors to make these cells change. But in this new model, the cells changed on their own because of the structure of the scaffold.
Testing the Model: A Promising Future
To check if their new model worked, the scientists tested a drug that could potentially treat fibrosis.
They found that, after giving this drug, the tissue stayed flexible and the cells didn’t change into the scar-forming myofibroblasts. This shows that the new model could be useful for testing new treatments for fibrosis.
This breakthrough could mean a big step forward in heart disease research. With this new model, we can develop and test new drugs without using animals and with a greater chance of success.
The researchers hope this model will help us to understand fibrosis better and eventually find a cure for heart failure.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that yogurt may help lower the death risks in heart disease, and coconut sugar could help reduce artery stiffness.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about antioxidants that could help reduce dementia risk, and epilepsy drug may help treat Alzheimer’s disease.
The study was published in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.
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