Total number of participants: 11
Number of different nationalities represented: 3
Total number of speakers: 1
Total number of talks: 1

Abstract

Prevalent worldwide, acute myocardial infarctions can cause ischemic injuries to the heart that persist and lead to progressive degradation of the organ. Tissue engineering techniques involving the addition of advanced materials or replacement cell populations present a hopeful means of treating these injuries, either by mechanically stabilizing the injured ventricle, or by fostering cell growth to replace myocytes lost
to damage.   To help guide the development of such treatments, the
effect of adding non-contractile material to the heart was evaluated using an advanced finite element model of an injured ovine left ventricle.  These simulations indicated that addition of small amounts of non-contractile material (on the order of 1 - 5% total wall volume) to infarct border zone regions reduced pathological systolic fiber stresses to levels near those found in normal remote regions. 
Simulations also determined that direct addition to the infarct itself caused increases in ventricle ejection fraction while the underlying performance of the pump, ascertained by the Starling relation, was not improved.  From these theoretical results, advanced biomaterials were developed specifically for injection into the injured myocardium, and were characterized and tested for their mechanical properties and ability to sustain the proliferation of a stem cell population suitable for transplantation.  When tested in vivo in a murine infarct model, these injectable materials stabilized injured ventricles, reducing function loss over 6 weeks, and promoted the survival of transplanted stem cells.