Bioengineers 'Pump' Life into Post-Heart Attack Therapies, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Study

(PhysOrg.com) -- Bioengineers at UC San Diego are one step closer to improving therapies for heart attack victims. A paper recently published in Biomaterials called “Hydrogels with time-dependent material properties enhance cardiomyocyte differentiation in vitro,” describes how the researchers measured the increase in stiffness that occurs in heart muscle as it develops and then mimicked that change in a modified version of a biological material called hyaluronic acid.