Biotechnology Builds a New Heart
Researchers at the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair have successfully created a beating heart using the outer structure of one heart and injecting heart cells from another rat. The technique, called whole organ decellularization, could be used in a similar process to create a replacement heart for humans in need of a heart transplant.
The scientists first used detergents and other chemicals to wash out all the old heart cells from rat and pig hearts, leaving a scaffold of tubes that once were the organ’s blood vessels. Stem cells were then injected into the scaffold, where they were supplied with nutrients, allowing them to grow and create a new organ. Within eight days, the hearts were effectively pumping.
This new research is exciting because the stem cells from a recipient’s body could be used to regenerate a heart. This means that the heart would be immunologically similar to the recipient making the body less likely to reject it.
Nearly 5 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure and approximately 50,000 of those patients die each year awaiting a donor heart.
The scientists first used detergents and other chemicals to wash out all the old heart cells from rat and pig hearts, leaving a scaffold of tubes that once were the organ’s blood vessels. Stem cells were then injected into the scaffold, where they were supplied with nutrients, allowing them to grow and create a new organ. Within eight days, the hearts were effectively pumping.
This new research is exciting because the stem cells from a recipient’s body could be used to regenerate a heart. This means that the heart would be immunologically similar to the recipient making the body less likely to reject it.
Nearly 5 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure and approximately 50,000 of those patients die each year awaiting a donor heart.
posted by Kristina Barsten at 5:54 PM
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