health & wellness DONATE USED BOOKS AND MEDIA NOW All kinds of gently used books plus audiobooks, videos, records, cd's and dvd's B ookstock. USED BOOK AND MEDIA SALE SUPPORTING THE NEED TO READ DRIVE-THRU & DROP-OFF Sunday, October 26, 2014 Israelis test gold-plated 'cardiac patch' to treat heart attacks. Andrew Tobin Times of Israel I sraeli researchers are testing a bio- compatible gold-plated "cardiac patch" built by using the patient's own tissues — and with the potential to reverse heart damage for the first time. Up to now, serious heart damage from attacks or disease can be treated only by heart transplants. While the procedure has saved thousands of lives over the past half century, the main drawbacks are a lack of enough donors, rejection rates and high costs. If it were possible to transplant just parts of the heart muscle to replace damaged sections that would be a prom- ising alternative. But researchers have yet to figure out how to get the replace- ment tissue, called a cardiac patch, to conduct electricity or to be accepted by the recipient's immune system. In a forward-looking study pub- lished in the journal Nano Letters in September, the Israeli researchers tested a cardiac patch they engineered using a new technique and enhanced with gold nanoparticles, which appeared to improve the cardiac patch's electrical conductivity. Heartbeat is controlled by electrical impulses generated by the heart tissue itself. While they used animal tissues in the study, the researchers say that in the future, the same kind of cardiac patch could be made from the tissues of a human transplant recipient. In this form, the patch could be personalized to also avoid immune system rejection. Clinical trials are several years away. A Golden Opportunity A heart attack blocks blood supply to the heart, damaging or killing affected tis- sue. Because heart cells cannot multiply and because heart muscles contain few stem cells, the tissue is unable to repair itself. Along with other technologies, cardiac patches are being developed to repair the heart without replacing it. If the kinks are worked out, the impact could be significant. JCC West Bloomfield loading dock 11:00a.m.-1:00p.m. Upcoming collections: Dec. 7th, Jan. 11th, Feb. 8th, and March 22nd. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Western countries. The only treatment for advanced heart disease today is heart transplant. But almost half of the people on donation lists today have been waiting for more than a year, and about the same percentage of people die within five years of their first heart attack, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Professor Tal Dvir, a bioengineer at Tel Aviv University, has been engineer- ing heart tissue in his lab since 2011, using various materials like animal tis- sues, collagen springs and gold nanopar- ticles. In the latest study, he and his stu- dents engineered the first cardiac patch made with animal tissues and with gold nanoparticles. Dvir introduced the engi- neering technique in a study published this summer. Cardiac patches are engineered by allowing heart cells to grow on a 3-D scaffold, similar to the extracellular matrix that naturally supports the cells in the heart. In the study, the researchers derived the extracellular matrix for their cardiac patch from a membrane taken from a pig's abdomen, a biomaterial also found in humans. Because foreign bodies can trigger an immune system response in a recipi- ent, they removed all the pig cells and antigens from the membrane. They then coated the remaining cocktail-napkin- sized scaffold with gold nanoparticles. To turn the gold-coated scaffold into a cardiac patch, the researchers "seeded" it with stem cells taken from rat hearts. Over time, the cells came together to form a tissue that generated its own electrical impulses and expanded and contracted spontaneously. With microscopic imaging and chemi- cal and electrical tests, the researchers found that the cardiac patch looked more like natural heart tissue and con- tracted more forcefully with less electri- cal stimulation than did a cardiac patch without a golden sheen. "The results we got were very nice Reversing Damage on page 34 ADDITIONAL DROP–OFF SITES Jewish Community Center, Oak Park • Jewish Community Center, West Bloomfield FOR EXACT DATES AND HOURS www.bookstock.info • 248-645-7840 ext. 365 REMEMBER TO SHOP OUR SALE APRIL 26-MAY 3, 201 .9\r1 ic77(7 pa 3.43'49 *)- NC J tI, I•1 YR tO=UNITY CENTER L11 ElIZYW711NCII @BookstockMl Tweet with us using #BookstockMI sct.,9;31F....4c facebook.com/BookstockMI NOW OPEN! 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