Question: how does your resech help people who have heart atacks

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. This material has to have certain features that make it suitable for use in the heart and I’m trying to create a material that has them.