1. INJECTABLE MICROBEADS TO PREVENT LEFT VENTRICULAR REMODELING AFTER MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION

Department: Bioengineering
Faculty Advisor(s): Karen Christman

Primary Student
Name: Jennifer Marie Singelyn
Email: jsingely@ucsd.edu
Phone: 858-534-9628
Grad Year: 2011

Abstract
Injectable microbeads to prevent left ventricular remodeling after myocardial infarction Jennifer M. Singelyn, Aboli A. Rane, Pamela J. Schup-Magoffin, Manasa Gadde, Jeffrey Omens, Karen L. Christman Department of Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego. 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093

Current efforts to prevent heart failure after myocardial infarction (MI) have focused on cellular transplantation to replace necrotic cardiomyocytes, prevent negative left ventricular (LV) remodeling, and regenerate heart tissue. Skeletal myoblasts, cardiomyocytes, and stem cells have all been shown to preserve cardiac function post-MI, with no conclusion as to the optimal cell type. These results suggest that the cells may provide nothing more than structural enhancement of the LV wall and that the improvement is not a result of viable cells or bioactivity. To test this hypothesis, we decided to examine the injection of polystyrene microbeads with an average diameter of 10m, which is the approximate size of cells typically transplanted in a rat MI model. As an initial study, microbeads were injected into the LV free wall of non-infarcted hearts of Sprague Dawley male rats, in order to confirm that the microbeads would not provoke an immune response. Examination of H&E stained sections, at a two week time point, revealed that microbead injections did not elicit an additional inflammatory response compared to saline injections. We thus anticipate that injection of microbeads will allow us to decipher whether the preservation of cardiac function post-cell injection is a result of wall thickening and structural support rather than bioactivity. Increasing wall thickness and preventing LV remodeling with microbeads, a non-biological agent, could be a more clinically applicable approach than cells, which require isolation and expansion, and may induce an immune response.

« Back to Posters or Search Results