Ventrix, Inc., today announced that it has initiated a Phase 1 trial of VentriGel™, an off-the-shelf, biomaterial scaffold designed to facilitate the repair of cardiac tissue following myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack.

University of California, San Diego bioengineer Karen Christman's new injectable hydrogel, which is designed to repair damaged cardiac tissue following a heart attack, has been licensed to San Diego-based startup Ventrix, Inc, which is planning the first human clinical trials of the technology. Christman is a co-founder of Ventrix.

Ventrix, Inc. announced today that its VentriGel cardiac repair scaffold safely and effectively mitigated left ventricular remodeling and improved cardiac function in pigs after myocardial infarction, or heart attack. The findings, made during pre-clinical studies, were published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Based on these and other results, Ventrix will initiate a first-in-man clinical trial for VentriGel later this year.

The semi-solid injectable called VentriGel was developed by UC San Diego bioengineer Karen Christman, Ph.D., and her colleagues. Christman derived the gel from tissue removed from the heart muscle of a pig.

University of California, San Diego researchers have developed a new injectable hydrogel that could be an effective and safe treatment for tissue damage caused by heart attacks.The study by Karen Christman and colleagues appears in the Feb. 21 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.