BHF RESEARCH STORY OF THE YEAR 2023 - Professor Massimo Caputo

British Heart Foundation (BHF) celebrated its 6th annual Heart Hero Awards on Wednesday 6 December 2023 at Glaziers Hall in London.
The annual awards celebrate the incredible supporters who go above and beyond for BHF, including the innovative BHF-funded scientists and their teams who are tackling some of the biggest challenges into heart and disease.
BHF invited their supporters and the public to explore three extraordinary BHF-funded research projects and choose which one inspired them the most, with the overall winner awarded as BHF Research Story of the Year.
Professor Massimo Caputo and his team at University of Bristol have developed a new revolutionary type of ‘heart plaster’ that could improve the way surgeons treat children living with congenital heart disease.
The plaster is designed to adapt to the child’s heart as it grows, so they don’t need as many open-heart surgeries.
Children born with holes between the two pumping chambers of the heart, or abnormalities to the valves, often require heart reconstruction surgery using grafts. However, the grafts currently used are non-biological and rigid, meaning as the child grows, they can quickly fail.
Professor Caputo and his team have developed a new type of living graft containing mesenchymal cells. These cells have the ability to change into a range of different cell types and could boost the repair of heart tissue without being rejected by the child’s body.
These patches, designed to be sewn into the affected area during surgery, have the potential to adapt and grow with the child’s heart as they get older, removing the need for repeated surgeries.
All information in this video was correct at time of recording.
To find out more about the BHF Heart Hero Awards, please visit www.bhf.org.uk/heartheroes
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