A two-day kick-off meeting brought together for the first time all participants of the UCT Three-Way PhD Global Partnership Programme “Computational Mechanobiology and Bioengineering towards Cell Therapies for Heart Attack and Heart Failure” at the University of California Berkeley on 11-12 August 2016. This programme is a collaboration between the University of Cape Town as lead institution, the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile as Southern partner and a consortium of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and Berkeley (UCB) and Stanford University as Northern partner. The meeting was hosted by Professor Mohammad Mofrad from UCB.

The risk of cardiovascular diseases, currently the leading cause of death globally, has been reported to increase with the improvement of economic wealth and social environment, particularly on the continent of Africa, heightening the threat of increased fatalities in our region without more effective treatment. It is estimated that up to two thirds of Myocardial Infarction patients, or those who have experienced a heart attack, develop heart failure and it therefore asserts that Myocardial Infarction is the most common cause of heart failure. Considering that as many as 30-40% of these patients die from heart failure within the first year after diagnosis, with the annual mortality rate around 10% even through optimal modern therapy, alternative and more innovative therapies are urgently needed.

Professor Julius Guccione from UCSF, one of the key partners in the programme, was part of a team that demonstrated the exciting potential that acellular biomaterial injections can have on the failing heart, in improving cardiac function. The ejection fraction, or the fraction of outbound blood pumped by the heart, was measured on a patient six months after the injection treatment in combination with coronary artery bypass surgery. An increase of the ejection fraction was observed from 40% to 75%, with normal rates for healthy persons usually measuring around 62 ± 6%. There has also been significant interest in stem cell delivery as a therapeutic approach for Myocardial Infarction. Clinical studies have demonstrated good safety profiles but only modest benefits. Currently the most promising mechanism of cell therapies are cardioprotective paracrine effects rather than regeneration of cardiac tissue.

This project proposes that predictive computational modelling of the biomechanics and electrophysiology in the infarcted heart will provide efficient tools to study the interplay between stem cell and biomaterial injections, infarct biomechanics and electrophysiology and to optimise treatment parameters for therapies for acute myocardial infarction and the prevention of infarct-related heart failure. It is envisaged that cell therapies can further advance the benefits of biomaterial injections.

This programme is funded from the Dr Leopold and Carmen Ellinger Stiftung.