A day in the life: Professor Sanjay Sinha and the Heart Healing Patch

06:00

I get up at 6am, and always start my day with Weetabix. I like to top them with ground almonds and flaxseeds, and some strawberries or blueberries.

I want to be able to offer people with heart problems better treatments in the future

Before work, I try to exercise, either on my rowing machine or going for a run. Until recently, I hadn’t run regularly for years. But when I heard that the BHF was the charity of the year for the TCS London Marathon, it inspired me to get my running shoes on. My team simply couldn’t keep doing all their exciting research without funding from the BHF. And I’m also doing it because I treat people with heart problems, whose courage in the face of their illness really inspires and drives me. I want to be able to offer them better treatments in the future.

08:00

I’m a cardiologist, and I divide my time between research at the University of Cambridge and working at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. I work in the cardiology clinic every two weeks, and every 10 weeks I spend a full week in the hospital – 24 hours a day – supervising the treatment of people with heart problems.

The rest of the time, I’m based at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. It’s an easy five-minute cycle or short walk from home. I’m usually there by 8am and catch up on emails or paperwork before my meetings start.

09:30

My first meeting of the day is with all the members of my research group. Usually one person will present their results for us to discuss.

About half of the team is working on developing ‘heart patches’ to repair heart damage caused by a heart attack. Heart muscle can’t regrow, so people who have a heart attack can be left with hearts which aren’t able to pump blood properly. This is called heart failure. The only cure is a heart transplant.

So we want to try delivering new heart muscle cells into the heart as a ‘patch’. To do this, heart muscle cells are grown in the lab from stem cells and added onto a scaffold made from the protein collagen. The scaffold looks a bit like a sponge, and it’s engineered to encourage the heart muscle cells to line up, helping them beat effectively. Two weeks later, we’ll have a thumbnail-size, beating patch ready for testing.

The patches are being tested on damaged rat hearts, to see whether they are safe and effective at helping the heart to beat. We’ve found that they work better if epicardial cells, found on the outside of the heart, are included in the patch. From studying how hearts develop in the womb, we know that heart muscle can’t grow properly without epicardial cells, so putting these cells together in the patches is applying what Mother Nature has told us about how to build a heart.

Once we’ve shown that the patches are safe and effective in rats, we want to get ready for the first tests in people. A thumbnail-sized patch is big enough for a rat heart, but we might need a patch the size of my palm to help repair a human heart. We hope to start the first tests in people, most likely those with severe heart failure who aren’t able to have a transplant, in the next five years.

11:00

I’m the Deputy Director of the Stem Cell Institute, so the rest of my morning will often be spent in meetings related to that. The Institute brings together scientists working in stem cell research across a wide range of fields.

13:00

After a working lunch at my desk, catching up on emails, I meet individually with members of my team. It’s important they feel supported and can ask for advice.

The half of my team that isn’t working on the heart patches is using stem cells to mimic diseases ‘in a dish’. We ask someone who has a genetic condition, such as Marfan syndrome, for a small sample of their skin or blood. We grow cells from that sample in the lab, turn them into stem cells, then into blood vessel cells, for example. As these cells have the same genetic differences as the person who donated their sample, they can help us understand how these differences lead to the symptoms of the genetic condition. We can also use them to test potential treatments.

15:00

I spend the rest of the afternoon writing grant applications or research papers. Grant applications to funders like the BHF are an essential part of my work.

Nine out of the 14 people currently working in my lab are supported by the BHF

Nine out of the 14 people currently working in my lab are supported by the BHF.

18:30

I head home around 6.30pm, and my wife and I will go for a walk together. If I haven’t managed to get one in before work, I might also go for a short run to keep on top of my marathon training.

20:00

At home, sometimes I need to fit in some extra work, like preparing for a lecture to students at the university. After dinner, my wife and I enjoy watching comedy together. It’s important to have some time to wind down, so I might also spend some time reading or playing chess.

23:45

I try to get to bed before midnight, and I’m lucky that I’m usually asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Seeing so many people affected by heart failure and other heart and circulatory diseases in the hospital brings home its wider importance.

While the days are long, I love the work I do and am lucky to be surrounded by an amazing team of scientists. The research they do is so exciting, and seeing so many people affected by heart failure and other heart and circulatory diseases in the hospital brings home its wider importance.

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