New heart of gold could save many lives
Israeli doctor develops groundbreaking innovation: artificial tissue containing gold fibers that rehabilitates damage caused by heart attack • Team led by Dr. Tal Dvir is already working on similar technology to rehabilitate other internal organs.
Ziva Mougrabi-Kubani and Ilan Gattegno
Israeli doctor Tal Dvir and his team have developed a groundbreaking innovation allowing caregivers to better treat and prevent heart attacks, the number one killer in the Western world. This medical breakthrough involves pulsating cardiac patches that contain tiny gold fibers – patches that can be implanted in diseased hearts to rehabilitate them. The gold serves as an agent that conducts electricity essential for the normal function of the heart.
Studies indicate that 50 percent of heart attack sufferers will die within five years of their first attack, while many others will remain weakened. The most prevalent solution nowadays, a heart transplant, is extremely problematic due to a shortage of available hearts. With this new development, many more heart attack survivors will be able to receive adequate treatment.
Dvir presented the cardiac patch on Monday during the first French-Israeli Conference on Nanotechnology applied to Life Sciences, organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox!
According to the program of the conference, "the heart is a non-regenerating organ. Consequently, the loss of cardiac cells and formation of scar tissue after extensive myocardial infarction frequently leads to congestive heart failure. Given the scarcity of cardiac donors, a potential approach to treat the infarcted heart is to repopulate the ‘dead zone’ with cells capable of spontaneous contraction".
Some three years ago Dvir reached a breakthrough in his research while working in the U.S. First he collaborated with researches from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and later he returned to Israel and joined a research team at Tel Aviv University. The team, comprised of chemists, biologists, and engineers, combined various nanotechnology methods and tissue engineering in its experiments.
The experiments involved a sample of damaged heart muscle which was affixed to bio-material (a bed on which tissue can be cultivated and developed). Since the bio-material does not conduct electricity, the tissue cells did not pulsate simultaneously and another material was required to remedy the electrical shortfall.
The researchers came up with a unique solution – highly conductive gold, from which they fashioned nanometer (a billionth of a meter) thick fibers.
"In this case, the gold fibers solved the problem of the simultaneous pulsing of the cells, improved the cells' conductivity and thus allowed the use of artificial tissue," Dvir explained. "We saw that the tissue was working well independently, and then all we had to do was affix it to scarred heart muscle and rehabilitate the heart."
Dvir hailed the suitability of gold for use within the body saying, "it is known that the material does not harm the immune system as the fiber involved is less than a hairline thick and as such its use has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."
The next stage: engineered nerve-system tissue
Dvir's study was published in this month's issue of the prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology. In the journal, Dvir explained, "in the future we hope that the next stages of development will include the use of gold fibers in engineered tissue for nerve cells, and brain tissue, thereby allowing perhaps to improve brain tissue that was damaged as a result of traumatic injury, or for example nerve cells damaged, or a torn or injured spinal cord." Dvir's lab at Tel Aviv University is currently working on creating engineered brain cell tissue out of nerve cells and biomedical Materials which contain gold fibers.
