New hope may lie in lab-created heart

With heart disease the leading cause of death in America, a new form of heart replacement could be very beneficial. Currently, there are two options for those whose hearts are beyond simple repair. Either a heart is transplanted from another person, who unfortunately must have died recently, or a completely mechanical and artificial heart can be inserted. Both have their major drawbacks. Relying on human transplants can leave patients waiting for a very long time, they may never receive the heart they need to survive. If the heart is obtained, there is a small window to complete the transplantation. If all goes well, the patient must still hope his own body does not reject the new heart, in which case all is lost and the patient is back where he started. Artificial hearts are easier to obtain, but they are not very reliable. They tend to fail rather easily after a long time.
So a new method could revolutionize the treatment of heart failure and save many lives. A team at the University of Minnesota has found a possible solution. It is still in the early stages of development, but it shows much promise. Their idea is to take a heart and dissolve out the interior portions leaving only the outer case. Then undifferentiated cells could be pumped into the case and hopefully they would form the new heart. This would be like gutting a house and using the outermost shell to create the new house instead of tearing it down and rebuilding it from scratch.
Currently, the researchers have only experimented with rat hearts and some pig hearts; however, they have yet to attempt an actual heart transplant into either the pig or the rat. They hope to be far enough along in their research to move to human trails within 3 to 5 years
If the technology works out, the idea of heart transplants would a lot less complicated. It would be relatively easy to obtain a donor heart to clean out as the heart does not need to be completely functioning. The only criterion is that the case be intact. Also, the recipients own heart cells or embryonic cells could be used to create the new heart meaning that the body should accept the heart as its own, thus the heart would be less likely to be rejected.
Overall, this new technology could save many of the people who must wait forever on the heart transplant list and still never get the heart they need. Obtaining the heart would be a lot less demanding, and complications after transplant would be greatly reduced. If this new method proves successful, heart failure may no longer be such a life threatening situation.



http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/01/14/rebuilt.heart/index.html?iref=newssearch