Question: how do the plants help hearts

Marcus Johns answered on 17 Jun 2014:

When people have a heart attack, the oxygen supply to the heart cells is cut off. This causes the cells to die. Unlike our skin cells that can be replaced when they die, our heart cells can’t be replaced. This means that the dead cells create scar tissue and the heart can’t function as well as it did before. If the person then has another heart attack, the area that is scarred will increase. If it increases too much the heart will fail and the person will die.

My research aim is to be able to create a material that heart cells can be grown on and then put on the scar tissue – a kind of bandage – to help heal it, restoring the heart function to what it was before the heart attack. The material used has to have certain properties that make it suitable for this use and I think plants can be used to make it.

Surrounding the cells in our body is something called the extra cellular matrix, which effectively tells the cells when to grow and where. There’s lots of chemicals present in this matrix but the chemical that I’m interested in is called hyaluranon. It is known that this chemical can help cells grow and help wounds to heal. The idea is to make a material that mimics hyaluranon in order to promote healing in the heart.

The chemical I use that is found in plants is called cellulose. It’s found in all trees and plants, which means that it is an almost inexhaustible supply, making it readily available and cheap. It also has a similar chemical structure to hyaluronan, although I need to change it slightly in order to improve it, which is part of my research.

Hope that makes sense, feel free to ask anything else.