A New Biogel Claims to Repair Heart Attack Damage
Researchers at the University of Manchester have invented a body-safe gel that can be injected into a living heart to support the growth of new tissue. Cardiac arrest occurs about once every five minutes in the United Kingdom and once every 36 seconds here in the United States. While more people survive these days than ever before, each instance results in significant damage that can lead to future health complications.
The heart has a hard time healing on its own; after about a week it stops recruiting resources from the rest of the body, leaving a large portion of the damage unresolved. This means it’s up to the medical field to find ways to boost cell regeneration and promote the growth of healthy tissue. Stem cell therapy is perhaps the most promising strategy to this end, yet it still leaves much to be desired: doctors inject stem cells from a donor or the patient’s own body into the patient’s heart with the goal of reducing fatal arrest in the future. But an extremely small percentage of those stem cells actually “stick.” With a gel like the one just announced, the cells have a better chance of staying in place.
The gel is made of peptides, or chains of amino acids that make up proteins. Thanks to the flexibility of these peptides’ bonds, scientists can choose whether to use the gel as a liquid (by putting the gel under stress) or a solid (by removing stress). The gel is injected into the heart in its liquid form, then returned to a more solid substance as it helps new cells graft.
So far, the researchers have used the gel in healthy mice to test its viability in living hearts. They’ve also proven the gel’s effectiveness by using it to grow reprogrammed heart cells in a dish for three weeks at a time. Next they plan on testing it in mice that have already endured cardiac arrest.
“While it’s still early days, the potential this new technology has in helping to repair failing hearts after a heart attack is huge,” said lead researcher Katherine King, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, in the institution’s statement. “We’re confident that this gel will be an effective option for future cell-based therapies to help the damaged heart to regenerate.”
Continue reading
SpaceX Plans to ‘Catch’ Super Heavy Rockets With Launch Tower
Legs Who needs 'em? Not the new SpaceX Super Heavy booster, if Elon Musk's latest tweets are true.
Qualcomm to Acquire Nuvia, Head Back Into Custom CPU Development
Qualcomm will buy Nuvia for $1.4B. The ARM CPU developer has been working on a server chip to challenge x86, but we don't know yet if Qualcomm will continue those plans.
NASA Gives Up on InSight’s Burrowing Mars Heat Probe
NASA's InSight lander has been studying the red planet for more than two years now. During that time, InSIght has beamed back data on the planet's seismic activity, weather, and even the sound of blowing wind. It was also supposed to relay data on the planet's internal temperature, but NASA has announced that it's giving up on that endeavor after being unable to get the heat probe to burrow into the fine Martian soil.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sampler Will Head Back to Earth on May 10
NASA is making plans for OSIRIS-REx to head back to Earth with its precious cargo. According to the team, OSIRIS-REx will begin that journey on May 10th.