Infusible Extracellular Matrix for Treating Myocardial Infarction

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Summary Despite recent advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, heart failure (HF) following myocardial infarction (MI) continues to be the leading cause of death in the U.S., and the rest of the western world. One of our goals is the development of new, minimally invasive tissue-engineered therapies for the treatment of MI. While cell therapies have been extensively studied for the treatment of MI and HF, meta-analyses of initial cell therapy trials suggest only a modest effect on cardiac function. Injectable biomaterials that stimulate endogenous repair are an attractive, potentially more effective alternative since therapies could still be delivered minimally invasively via catheter, yet could be off the shelf and have significantly reduced costs and complications compared to cell products. The PI’s lab developed the first cardiac specific injectable hydrogel, a myocardial matrix hydrogel, which is derived from decellularized porcine myocardial extracellular matrix (ECM) and is deliverable via a transendocardial injection catheter. This material is liquid at room temperature and forms a porous and fibrous scaffold upon injection, which we have shown promotes pro-remodeling immune cell polarization, other endogenous cell infiltration and cardiac repair in subacute and chronic MI models. This initial work led to a successful Phase I clinical trial in post-MI patients. However, this approach is not amenable to treating acute MI patients because of safety issues related to transendocardial injections. Therefore, significant damage and remodeling of the heart will occur before a patient is even eligible for this therapy. In contrast to transendocardial delivery, intracoronary infusion can be performed in acute MI patients as interventional cardiologists are already performing a balloon angioplasty. We therefore recently developed a new infusible form of ECM (iECM) that can be delivered via intracoronary infusion to coat and fill gaps of damaged vasculature to heal the tissue. We have already shown this is effective when delivered immediately post-reperfusion in a rat acute MI model and in a pilot pig study. In acute MI, we hypothesize that iECM promotes endothelial cell survival and polarization of infiltrating immune cells to a pro-remodeling phenotype, which secondarily along with an already demonstrated reduction in vascular permeability results in improved cardiomyocyte survival. Our preliminary results provide strong support for the use of our new iECM technology for treating acute MI. In this proposal, we will better understand the immunomodulatory and regenerative potential of our iECM technology and perform translational studies with the goal of developing a novel therapy for acute MI.