Jump straight to:
Restoring damaged heart muscle with a special patch
Professor Chris Denning, University of Nottingham
This team are trying to restore lost heart muscle after a heart attack, a key driver for heart failure.
The researchers have previously formed sheets of beating heart muscle from heart muscle cells in the lab. These are known as heart patches.
They are now looking at ensuring the patch does not affect heart rhythm. This will help indicate whether the patch could work in humans.
Additionally, the team will study how healing and damage after a heart attack might affect the grafting of the patch and heart rhythm in the long term.
Making the heart patch as effective as possible
Dr Sanjay Sinha, University of Cambridge and Dr Nicola Smart, University of Oxford
This project will build on Professor Denning’s work into restoring damaged heart muscle with a special patch.
The function of heart patches can be improved by including other cell types found in the heart, not just heart muscle cells. For this reason, the team will look at developing different cell types, and the materials that form the supportive structure of the patches, in the lab.
They will then test different combinations and see what works best, driving this innovative technology further forward and paving the way for future studies in humans.
Finding the genes behind heart muscle growth
Professor Mauro Giacca, King’s College London
During development in the womb, new heart muscle can grow. This regenerative capacity declines dramatically in the first weeks after birth, never to resume later in life. The large size, complexity and constant contraction of adult heart muscle cells also reduces their ability to multiply like smaller cells do when tissue is damaged.
To learn more about how these processes impact heart muscle growth, the team will analyse a vast library of genetic information.
They hope to discover important genetic messages that regulate heart muscle growth and repair, which could be harnessed to create new heart muscle in the future.
Switching on the genes that tell blood and lymphatic vessels to grow
Dr Joaquim Vieira, University of Oxford
In earlier work, the team have shown that the heart attempts to repair itself after injury by using similar processes to those used in the embryo. They found that cells from the outer layer of the heart are ‘switched on’. This process does not happen for long enough to support new blood vessel and muscle growth.
Looking at this process in more detail, the team want to paint a fuller picture of how this process works.
They hope to find a way to make the genes active in adults, helping the heart to heal itself after injury.
Learning from heart development in the womb
Professor Stefan Hoppler, University of Aberdeen
This team is also studying how we grow heart muscle in the womb and if the relevant mechanisms could be used to promote heart repair in adults after a heart attack.
There are a number of avenues worth exploring in this field of research, and this particular team believe a specific protein called Wnt could play an important role.
The team aim to find out whether Wnt can be used to repair damage to hearts. The team will try to pinpoint where and when this protein and its related functions are reawakened and become active after a heart attack.
Also in this section
Read about our regenerative research into growing new lymphatic and blood vessels in the heart.
Explore the projects