Major improvements made in engineering heart repair patches from stem cells.
Date: 18.10.2009
University of Washington (UW) researchers have **succeeded** in engineering human **tissue patches** free of some problems that have stymied **stem-cell** repair for damaged hearts.
The disk-shaped patches can be **fabricated** in sizes ranging from less than a millimeter to a half-inch in diameter. Until now, engineering tissue for **heart repair** has been hampered by cells dying at the **transplant core**, because **nutrients** and **oxygen** reached the edges of the patch but not the center. To make matters worse, the scaffolding materials to position the cells often proved to be harmful.
"University of Washington":[ http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=52494]
