On new lab chip, heart cells display a behavior-guiding ‘nanosense’

Biomedical engineers from John Hopkins teamed up Korean researchers and developed a surface to grow heart cells on the nano scale in a petri dish. Most of the previous heart cells cultured in vitro do not produce anything resembling the actual heart muscle. They developed a rigid surface with a nanoscale scaffold. Within two days of the heart cells being cultured, the cells began growing on the nanoscale scaffold that resemble more of the natural structure of the heart. This was done resembling the extracellular matrix. They hope to continue the experiment with a 3-D nano scaffold instead of just 2-D. This is important because with the new engineering scale, the researchers may now be able to find new information in vitro that resembles the natural heart. They might be able to discover how the electrical signals move at the nano level within the heart. This will be important in maybe finding more information on heart disease. This might lead to being able to grow new heart cells to some patients with damaged heart cells. Source: http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=7950