The same concept that keeps 6-year-olds' sneakers from falling off their feet could one day be used to repair hearts.
Conventional velcro uses densely packed loops and hooks to hold two sheets of fabric together.
When scientists looked for a way to connect multiple layers of heart tissue, they found that this mechanism works well for holding sheets of cells together, too, according to a report in the journal Science Advances.
"Our tissue velcro system also uses T-shaped hooks and loop geometry to link two sheets of tissue mesh together," said lead study author Boyang Zhang of the University of Toronto to Tech Times. "These tissues could potentially be used to patch up the damaged heart muscle after a heart attack."
After successfully growing single layers of heart cells in the lab, Zhang and his colleagues needed a way to scale their technique up to a 3D piece of tissue. That meant sticking layers of tissue together.
To do this, the researchers created a mesh structure on which to grow the cells. This biodegradable mesh provides the loop-and-hook structures of the velcro. Heart cells growing on this velcro scaffold can then come together to create a 3D piece of heart tissue that beats in response to electrical stimulation.
Just as with fabric velcro, not all of the hooks in the heart tissue velcro will catch on a loop. But because the hooks and loops are packed together so densely, enough grab onto one another to hold the two tissue layers together.
In addition to effectively bundling the tissues together, the velcro-like design has the advantage of allowing the layers to detach from one another, if desired.
"This is important for studying fundamental biology such as cell-cell interaction," Zhang explained.
The researchers still need to test the tissues in animal models, but lab tests thus far suggest that this technology just might stick.
