Cardiac Reperfusion

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Overview:

Administration of gene therapies and vascular growth factors that stimulate the formation of new arterioles and capillaries constitutes a new strategy that carries considerable promise for altering the course of ischemic heart disease. Therapeutic angiogenesis and gene therapies can be delivered to specific regions of the myocardium by specially designed catheters. Adequate delivery of such therapies, however, requires an imaging modality capable of visualizing both the diseased myocardial region and the therapy administration. MR, which can depict ischemic myocardial territories, holds great promise in the delivery of these evolving therapies.

Findings:

We are investigating endovascular delivery stategies for the administration of myocardial therapies. Introduction of the delivery catheter into the affected chamber of the heart may either be done by x-ray or MR (left image - real time b-FFE imaging showing a catheter in the left ventricle).



Determining the injection site and monitoring the delivery must be performed under MR (middle image - infusion of a Gd/ blue dye solution into the apex of the heart). By immediately sacrificing the animal after injection and MR imaging, we can correlate the distribution of the blue dye histologically with the region of MR enhancement (right photo). Dsitribution of the blue dye and the MR contrast agent, which feature similar atomic weights, has been very good.

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Last update: December 10, 2001