Heart Cells Display a Behavior-Guiding "Nanosense"

Bioengineers at Johns Hopkins University, along with colleagues in Korea, have developed a laboratory chip with nano-sized grooves that allow them to grow heart cell cultures that more closely resemble those of heart cells grown in vivo. The seed heart cells used the grooves and ridges to collect information as to what direction to grow, requiring no use of chemical signals to direct growth. This development allowed the researchers to speculate toward end goals of alternative methods of treatment or diagnostic tests for heart disease. Although the cultured heart cells do not exactly mimic those of naturally grown cells, the cells do possess some of the physiological characteristics of an actual heart in a living organism.

I think that this development is a great step toward alternative methods of treatment for heart disease. The fact that the growth of the cultured cells can be directed simply by the physical characteristics of the laboratory chip, without additional impetus (such as chemical signals) means that the bioengineers can direct the growth in distinct ways. The fact that the cultured cells also closely resemble their natural counterparts leads one to a possible conclusion that if the technique is advanced and refined, the process could be used to develop an artificial heart that more closely mimics a naturally grown heart in a living organism and can then be used for transplant. The heart cultures can also be used to multiply a given heart cell to aid in the diagnosis or potential treatments which might be better alternatives to heart transplants. The development looks to have wide-reaching applications and hopefully will provide for a decline in fatalities due to heart disease whether through earlier diagnoses or by treating conditions, or even possibly full-scale heart development for transplant.

URL: http://gazette.jhu.edu/2009/12/14/on-new-lab-chip-heart-cells-display-a-behavior-guiding-%E2%80%98nanosense%E2%80%99/