Tissue Engineered Heart Repair

There are a wide range of treatments in active use for such cartilage defects, although many of them have questionable or untested benefits which have not seen the light of rigorous scientific investigation. Within this category fall lavage and debridement. Microfracture and abrasion have been shown to produce some form of repair, but it itself is somewhat short-lived


The current research emphasis is very-much aimed at the use of Tissue Engineering for cartilage. Tissue Engineering is a strategy which combines living cells, bio-materials, and an appropriate range of mechanical and/or biological stimulation to replace or improve tissue functionality with a living biological repair.Using mice models and sophisticated gene chip technology, they found that mice that lacked certain specialized proteins had worse heart function and a decreased heart repair capacity after heart attacks as compared to mice that had these proteins, called stem cell factor receptors.

These stem cell factor receptors are frequently found on stem cells in the bone marrow and their role is to activate other "signaling" molecules, which cause stem cells to leave the bone marrow and migrate via the blood stream to the damaged heart tissue.

A further proof that stem cell factor receptor signaling works this way is the fact that once the knock-out mice underwent bone marrow transplantation from normal mouse donors, cardiac function was improved.