A new patch developed by researchers at Texas A&M University may offer a promising way to help the heart heal after a heart attack.
Led by Dr. Ke Huang, the team created a tiny microneedle patch that delivers medicine directly to the damaged area of the heart, encouraging healing and improving heart function.
The patch does this without affecting other parts of the body.
Each needle in the patch is extremely small and biodegradable. These needles are filled with microscopic particles that contain a healing molecule called interleukin-4 (IL-4). IL-4 is known to help control the immune system.
When the patch is placed on the surface of the heart, the microneedles gently break through the outer layer and dissolve, releasing IL-4 right where it’s needed.
Dr. Huang explained that the patch acts like a bridge, allowing the treatment to reach the damaged heart muscle beneath the surface—a place that is usually very difficult to treat directly. Their findings were published in the journal Cell Biomaterials.
When someone has a heart attack, part of their heart muscle loses oxygen and nutrients, which causes the cells in that area to die. The body responds by creating scar tissue. While this scar helps hold the heart together, it can’t beat or contract like healthy muscle. As a result, the rest of the heart has to work harder, which can eventually lead to heart failure.
Huang’s patch aims to break this damaging cycle. By delivering IL-4 directly to the injury site, it helps immune cells called macrophages switch from causing inflammation to supporting healing. This reduces the formation of scar tissue and helps improve heart function over time.
“Macrophages are the key,” Huang said. “They can either make things worse or help the heart recover. IL-4 turns them into helpers.”
Previous attempts to use IL-4 for heart healing involved injecting it into the bloodstream, but that often led to side effects in other parts of the body. The new patch avoids this by focusing the treatment only on the heart. “Instead of affecting the whole body, we’re treating just the heart,” Huang explained.
One of the surprising things the researchers found was that after using the patch, the heart muscle cells began to behave differently.
They were not only surviving but also communicating more effectively with nearby cells, especially endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. This improved cell-to-cell communication could be important for long-term recovery.
The patch also reduced inflammation from the endothelial cells, which can sometimes make damage worse after a heart attack. The team saw more activity in a signaling pathway called NPR1, which helps keep blood vessels healthy and supports the heart’s recovery.
Currently, using the patch requires open-chest surgery, but Huang hopes that in the future it could be delivered through a small tube instead. This would make it easier and safer for patients to receive the treatment.
“This is just the start,” Huang said. “We’ve shown that the idea works. Now we want to make it even better.”
Huang is also working with another professor, Dr. Xiaoqing Wang, to use artificial intelligence to map how the immune system responds. This could help improve how future treatments are designed and delivered.
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The study is published in Cell Biomaterials.
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