50,000 babies are born each year with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD).
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common birth defect in the United States, affecting nearly 50,000 births every year, with 25% of all diagnoses developing into critical heart defects.
Current treatments for CHD are strictly surgical in nature, which carry significant dangers such as infection and heart failure (Majumdar et al. 2019).
We need a minimally-invasive CHD treatment to save lives and reduce lifelong morbidity for those living with CHD.
It is known that the extracellular matrix (ECM) differs in composition between patients with and without CHD and that this ECM is critical to cell development and function (Lockhart et al. 2011). The cardiac ECM comprises a network of many proteins necessary for important cardiac cells, such as cardiomyocytes and fibroblasts, to function correctly.
Our team’s objective is to develop a minimally-invasive ECM injectable therapeutic that can be administered in a hospital setting to newborns diagnosed with CHD.
We will accomplish this objective through two Specific Aims:
Specific Aim #1: Assess ECM changes due to nitrofen toxin treatment in murine models associated with congenital defects
Specific Aim #2: Assess the impact of different ECM compositions on diseased cardiac cells to improve functionality
These aims will be carried out through the following Engineering Design Plan:
