A new study co-led by a physician-scientist at the University of Arizona’s Sarver Heart Center has unveiled that a subset of patients with artificial hearts can regenerate heart muscle tissue.
This discovery, published in the journal Circulation, could pave the way for innovative treatments and potentially a cure for heart failure, a condition affecting nearly 7 million adults in the U.S. and responsible for 14% of annual deaths.
Heart failure currently has no cure, with treatment options primarily limited to medications that slow its progression or advanced interventions like heart transplants and left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), which help pump blood.
Dr. Hesham Sadek, director of the Sarver Heart Center, noted that while skeletal muscles can regenerate after injury, heart muscle has long been thought incapable of such recovery.
The research team, funded by a grant from the Leducq Foundation Transatlantic Networks of Excellence Program, examined tissue samples from artificial heart patients provided by colleagues at the University of Utah Health.
They collaborated with international experts who utilized innovative carbon dating techniques to identify newly generated heart cells.
Remarkably, the findings revealed that patients with artificial hearts regenerated muscle cells at over six times the rate of healthy hearts. “This is the strongest evidence we have so far that human heart muscle cells can actually regenerate,” said Sadek.
He emphasised that this study supports the hypothesis that the inability of heart muscle to “rest” contributes to its loss of regenerative capacity shortly after birth.
The study suggests that artificial hearts may provide a form of “bed rest” for cardiac muscles, allowing them to heal similarly to how skeletal muscles recover after injury. Dr. Sadek aims to investigate why only about 25% of artificial heart patients exhibit this regenerative response and how to enhance this ability across all patients.