New breakthroughs. Bioprostheses for myocardial regeneration (or cardiac tissue engineering)

It is now 100 years since the discovery of the severe myocardium infarct. During that time, great progress has been made in reducing the after-effects that this produces in patients’ quality and length of life. Even so, at present, in most of the patients who are subjected to primary angioplasty, a cardiac scar (admittedly smaller) is still left that has no contractile capacity.

The new therapeutic options provided by stem cells and cardiac tissue engineering can help to reduce or eliminate this scar. Our team is actively working on biological and synthetic constructs capable of integrating themselves into the myocardium and regenerating the infarcted area. In some of these, we have gone from the cellular phase to the rodent model, then to the pig model (being the closest to man from the point of view of cardiovascular physiopathology), and finally we are now translating it into phase 1 clinical tests in humans. The use of biological or synthetic polymers, together with stem cells and growth factors all represents a new discipline – tissue engineering – which includes biology, technology and chemistry, and is an initiative that is beginning to bear fruit.