Home > Press > Building a smart cardiac patch: 'Bionic' cardiac patch could one day monitor and respond to cardiac problems
Abstract:
Scientists and doctors in recent decades have made vast leaps in the treatment of cardiac problems - particularly with the development in recent years of so-called "cardiac patches," swaths of engineered heart tissue that can replace heart muscle damaged during a heart attack.
Thanks to the work of Charles Lieber and others, the next leap may be in sight.
The Mark Hyman, Jr. Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Lieber, postdoctoral fellow Xiaochuan Dai and other co-authors of a study that describes the construction of nanoscale electronic scaffolds that can be seeded with cardiac cells to produce a "bionic" cardiac patch. The study is described in a June 27 paper published in Nature Nanotechnology.
"I think one of the biggest impacts would ultimately be in the area that involves replaced of damaged cardiac tissue with pre-formed tissue patches," Lieber said. "Rather than simply implanting an engineered patch built on a passive scaffold, our works suggests it will be possible to surgically implant an innervated patch that would now be able to monitor and subtly adjust its performance."
Once implanted, Lieber said, the bionic patch could act similarly to a pacemaker - delivering electrical shocks to correct arrhythmia, but the possibilities don't end there.
"In this study, we've shown we can change the frequency and direction of signal propagation," he continued. "We believe it could be very important for controlling arrhythmia and other cardiac conditions."
Unlike traditional pacemakers, Lieber said, the bionic patch - because its electronic components are integrated throughout the tissue - can detect arrhythmia far sooner, and operate at far lower voltages.
"Even before a person started to go into large-scale arrhythmia that frequently causes irreversible damage or other heart problems, this could detect the early-stage instabilities and intervene sooner," he said. "It can also continuously monitor the feedback from the tissue and actively respond."
"And a normal pacemaker, because it's on the surface, has to use relatively high voltages," Lieber added.
The patch might also find use, Lieber said, as a tool to monitor the responses under cardiac drugs, or to help pharmaceutical companies to screen the effectiveness of drugs under development.
Likewise, the bionic cardiac patch can also be a unique platform, he further mentioned, to study the tissue behavior evolving during some developmental processes, such as aging, ischemia or differentiation of stem cells into mature cardiac cells.
Although the bionic cardiac patch has not yet been implanted in animals, "we are interested in identifying collaborators already investigating cardiac patch implantation to treat myocardial infarction in a rodent model," he said. "I don't think it would be difficult to build this into a simpler, easily implantable system."
In the long term, Lieber believes, the development of nanoscale tissue scaffolds represents a new paradigm for integrating biology with electronics in a virtually seamless way.
Using the injectable electronics technology he pioneered last year, Lieber even suggested that similar cardiac patches might one day simply be delivered by injection.
"It may actually be that, in the future, this won't be done with a surgical patch," he said. "We could simply do a co-injection of cells with the mesh, and it assembles itself inside the body, so it's less invasive."
####
For more information, please click here
Contacts:
Peter Reuell
617-496-8070
Copyright © Harvard University
If you have a comment, please Contact us.Issuers of news releases, not 7th Wave, Inc. or Nanotechnology Now, are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.
Related News Press |
News and information
Simulating magnetization in a Heisenberg quantum spin chain April 5th, 2024
NRL charters Navy’s quantum inertial navigation path to reduce drift April 5th, 2024
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
Possible Futures
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
With VECSELs towards the quantum internet Fraunhofer: IAF achieves record output power with VECSEL for quantum frequency converters April 5th, 2024
Self Assembly
Liquid crystal templated chiral nanomaterials October 14th, 2022
Nanoclusters self-organize into centimeter-scale hierarchical assemblies April 22nd, 2022
Atom by atom: building precise smaller nanoparticles with templates March 4th, 2022
Nanostructures get complex with electron equivalents: Nanoparticles of two different sizes break away from symmetrical designs January 14th, 2022
Nanomedicine
New micromaterial releases nanoparticles that selectively destroy cancer cells April 5th, 2024
Good as gold - improving infectious disease testing with gold nanoparticles April 5th, 2024
Researchers develop artificial building blocks of life March 8th, 2024
Discoveries
Chemical reactions can scramble quantum information as well as black holes April 5th, 2024
New micromaterial releases nanoparticles that selectively destroy cancer cells April 5th, 2024
Utilizing palladium for addressing contact issues of buried oxide thin film transistors April 5th, 2024
Announcements
NRL charters Navy’s quantum inertial navigation path to reduce drift April 5th, 2024
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
Interviews/Book Reviews/Essays/Reports/Podcasts/Journals/White papers/Posters
Simulating magnetization in a Heisenberg quantum spin chain April 5th, 2024
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
Nanobiotechnology
New micromaterial releases nanoparticles that selectively destroy cancer cells April 5th, 2024
Good as gold - improving infectious disease testing with gold nanoparticles April 5th, 2024
Researchers develop artificial building blocks of life March 8th, 2024
The latest news from around the world, FREE | ||
Premium Products | ||
Only the news you want to read!
Learn More |
||
Full-service, expert consulting
Learn More |
||