Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Heart failure is when the heart becomes injured and can no longer pump blood well. This can become severe enough such that a person may need a new heart called a transplant. However, the body will not see this new heart as a part of itself and the immune system will attack it in a process known as rejection. To stop this, these patients are given special pills to weaken their immune systems. Sadly, these pills are not perfect and after a few years, the new heart will also become injured. The pills can also have lots of side effects that make these people more likely to get sick from other things. When this happens, many of these people will die. To tackle this problem, our group is studying the use of new technologies to stop the body from attacking the new heart. This year, we have taken some big steps towards making this happen. We have made a new small particle that may be able to stop the immune system from attacking these hearts. Unlike the pills, these nanodots do not weaken the immune system but instead makes the new heart invisible to the immune system. To test this, our group has come up with some experiments to test how these particles work in an animal model as a necessary step before introducing the technology to humans. We know that one of the first parts of a new heart to be injured is its blood vessels. That's why we will be transplanting blood vessels treated with our material between animals. If the particles can stop rejection of these blood vessels, we may be able to stop the immune system from injuring these hearts entirely. These particles can then become a new treatment for these people to make their lives longer and better. We are hopeful that this will soon become a reality.