Mending a broken heart – the bioengineering way

Bioengineers from Trinity College have developed a prototype patch that does the same job as crucial aspects of heart tissue.

Bioengineers from Trinity have developed a prototype patch that does the same job as crucial aspects of heart tissue.
Bioengineers from Trinity have developed a prototype patch that does the same job as crucial aspects of heart tissue.
Dr Gillian Hendy

A patch developed by bioengineers at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, withstands the mechanical demands and mimics the electrical signaling properties that allow hearts to pump blood rhythmically. Their work gets one step closer to a functional design that could mend a broken heart.

Cardiac patches lined with heart cells can be applied surgically to restore heart tissue in patients who have had damaged tissue removed after a heart attack and to repair congenital heart defects in infants and children. Ultimately the goal is to create cell-free patches that can restore the synchronous beating of heart cells without impairing the heart muscle movement.

The bioengineers report their work in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Michael Monaghan, ussher assistant professor in biomedical engineering at Trinity and senior author on the paper says, "Ours is one of few studies that looks at a traditional material, and through effective design allows us to mimic the direction-dependent mechanical movement of the heart, which can be sustained repeatably. This was achieved through a novel method called Melt Electrowriting (MEW) and through close collaboration with the suppliers located nationally we were able to customize the process to fit our design needs."

Dr. Gillian Hendy, director of Spraybase and a co-author on the paper, commended the team at Trinity on the work completed and advancements made on the Spraybase Melt Electrowriting (MEW) system.

Patches were manufactured via melt electrowriting – a core technology of Spraybase – which is reproducible, accurate, and scalable. The patches were also coated with the electroconductive polymer polypyrrole to provide electrical conductivity while maintaining cell compatibility.

The patch withstood repeated stretching, which is a dominant concern for cardiac biomaterials, and showed good elasticity, to accurately mimic that key property of heart muscle.

The work was performed in the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering, based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute in collaboration with Spraybase, a subsidiary of Avectas Ltd. It was funded by Enterprise Ireland through the Innovation Partnership Program (IPP).