Aligned scaffolds for improved myocardial regeneration

Patent Number: 7,384,786

Stem cell therapy for cardiac indications may take a variety of forms.  One of the easiest is intravenous administration of mesenchymal stem cells after a myocardial infarction.  This would require the stem cells to selectively home into damaged tissue.  It is known that various inflammatory agents such as IL-18 and SDF-1 are produced after infarction, and that these may guide homing of intravenously administered stem cells to where they are needed.  Another form of cardiac stem cell therapy involves administration of autologous bone marrow derived stem cells, particularly via the intracoronary route.  This has demonstrated substantial improvement in double blind clinical trials.

An ideal therapy would involve actually regenerating parts of the heart in vitro, and subsequent implantation.  In this manner the doctor would not have to rely on homing activity of the stem cells.  The current patent covers a three dimensional scaffold to which stem cells or other cells may be grown on, and subsequently used for repair of the damaged tissue. 

The first independent claim covers " A semi-solid, three-dimensional biocompatible scaffold for cell growth, tissue repair or regeneration comprising more than one scaffold layer of alternating attachment-strips (A-strips) and separating-strips (S-strips), wherein the A-strips within each scaffold layer are aligned parallel to each other, and wherein the A-strips preferentially promote cellular attachment to A-strips over cellular attachment to the S-strips."

The dependent claims cover various agents that may be used in the generation of the scaffold for optimal cell growth/differentiation.  These include mitogens, growth factors, and hormones.

View this patent on the USPTO website.