Heart Center

2012 archives (Jan - June)

May 8, 2012

Simple motions, complex tool: New robot successfully performs surgical closure in a beating heart

May 10, 2012

Building a drug-delivery platform to regenerate heart tissue

While current heart-attack treatments mainly try to preserve healthy heart tissue, scientists have been finding compounds that can stimulate growth of new tissue – either by getting heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) to replicate, or by stimulating other nearby cells to become cardiomyocytes. The challenge lies in getting these regenerative factors into the damaged heart tissue. Now, Bernhard Kuhn, MD, and team report success getting a sponge-like gel, soaked with one of these factors, to slowly release the medication into the space surrounding the heart, and from there into the damaged tissue.