Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) ranks number one in worldwide mortality. In Canada, heartdisease is responsible for a third of the yearly deaths. The procedures currently used to treatheart attack patients can restore blood flow to the heart, but they do not repair or regeneratethe damaged tissue. As a result, patients are left with a poorly functioning heart. About 1 inevery 10 patients will develop advanced heart failure, and this number is growing. Thesepatients suffer a loss of blood pumping capacity, and heart failure has a 5-year mortality rateof ~50%. Thus, there is a need to develop a new therapy able to simultaneously prevent theonset of heart failure and promote heart repair. Cell therapy has shown promise for treatingdamaged hearts, but improvements are needed. Our goal is to develop a new biomaterial thatcan be used with cell therapy to improve repair in the damaged heart and limit the extent ofdamage that occurs. The material is made from collagen, a protein with an important role insupporting cells and regulating their function. It is injectable for easy delivery into the injuredheart tissue. In preparation for clinical use, we aim to investigate how the physical propertiesof our injectable collagen materials affect their ability to repair the heart. The materials willalso be optimized to enhance the function of therapeutic cells. For this, we will use animalmodels of heart disease, which closely mimics the human condition. This work will allow us toestablish which characteristics our materials require in order to achieve the best therapeuticoutcome.