As of: March 24, 2024, 8:30 a.m
By: Heidi Niemann
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Weighing 20 grams and four millimeters thick: This is what the heart plaster developed at Göttingen University Medicine looks like.
It is currently in the clinical phase and is being tested on patients.
© UKSH/nh
Many people suffer from so-called heart failure.
This can be fatal.
Researchers at Göttingen University Medicine have a solution.
Göttingen – Frank Teege was the first patient in the world to have a laboratory-grown heart tissue implanted that consists of 800 million heart cells.
This so-called heart patch, which was developed at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), is intended to permanently strengthen the heart.
It worked impressively for Frank Teege: his cardiac output is now back to 35 percent - previously it was only ten.
Göttingen University Medicine develops “heart patch”: World’s first patient reports
Two years ago, Frank Teege constantly felt weak.
“I became increasingly weaker and could not walk 50 meters without experiencing shortness of breath,” says the 66-year-old.
The diagnosis: serious heart failure - his cardiac output was only ten percent.
Two years later, Teege feels reborn.
“I’m coming back up the mountains,” he says.
This medical miracle is made possible by a new procedure developed at UMG.
Happy about the success: Lothar Germeroth (Chairman of Repairon), Professor Stephan Ensminger (UKSH), Frank Teege, Prof. Ingo Kutschka and Prof. Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann (both UMG).
© Heidi Niemann
“This is more than we expected,” said Professor Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann happily at a press conference in Göttingen on Monday, March 18th.
The director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the UMG is one of the pioneers in the development of processes for producing artificial heart tissue.
Zimmermann has been researching this field for more than 25 years and has been working in Göttingen since 2008.
He had already achieved a sensational success at his previous place of work at the Eppendorf University Hospital in Hamburg: he and his team were the first scientists in the world to succeed in growing artificial heart tissue from human stem cells and making it beat.
That’s how important UMG research is for heart patients
The German Heart Report from 2022 shows the medical importance of research: According to this, heart failure is the most common reason for an inpatient hospital stay, with around 400,000 admissions every year.
In ten percent of all patients, the heart failure is so severe that they only have an average life expectancy of twelve months.
A heart attack is often the cause.
This causes the heart muscle tissue to die.
Since the tissue cannot renew itself, the organ is permanently damaged.
“We don’t have any medicine that leads to even one additional heart muscle cell,” says study leader Zimmermann.
The new treatment is intended to help here: Patients have intact heart muscle tissue produced in the laboratory sewn onto the affected “damaged area” in order to strengthen and rebuild the diseased heart muscle.
(pid)
Building on this basic research, he has developed a new therapeutic approach in recent years, which has been tested in a clinical study on patients at UMG and the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) since 2021.
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The tissue is made from so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, which were obtained from umbilical cord blood on behalf of the US health authority and imported to Germany by the Göttingen biotech company Repairon.
This is the first pluripotent stem cell line approved for clinical use in Europe, said Zimmermann.
Heart muscle cells and connective tissue cells are then developed from these stem cells and mixed with collagen.
The fabric takes around three months to produce.
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“Heart patch” from Göttingen University Medicine: Frank Teege is the first patient in the world to receive the maximum dose
In the first phase of the clinical study, the scientists first determined the maximum safe dose for the heart patch.
Two patients each received heart patches made from 200 million or 400 million cells, and eight patients received 800 million cells implanted.
Frank Teege was the first patient in the world to have a patch implanted with the maximum dose.
The minimally invasive operation took place in April 2022 at the University Hospital in Lübeck and lasted four hours.
The patch, which weighs 20 grams and is four millimeters thick, consists of two layers, each with ten overlapping heart tissues, each containing 40 million heart cells.
Like repairing an engine.
Heart patient Frank Teege
The particular challenge is to sew the patch onto the beating heart without wrinkles and in a stable manner, says the surgical head of the study at the UKSH in Lübeck, Professor Stephan Ensminger.
The main effect became apparent six to twelve months after the operation: the heart muscle is significantly strengthened by the implanted young cells and the pumping performance is increased accordingly.
In total, the scientists want to treat 35 patients with the maximum dose as part of their clinical study.
In the long term, they hope to obtain approval for the heart patch as a drug for advanced therapies and to establish it as a therapeutic method worldwide.
Frank Teege is enthusiastic about the health effect of the new procedure: “It’s like having repaired an engine.” (Heidi Niemann)