Researchers Create Beating Heart In Lab

Sunday Scientist writes "Minnesota researchers have created a beating heart in the laboratory. In a process called whole organ decellularization, they grew functioning heart tissue by using dead rat and pig hearts as a sort of flesh matrix, and reseeding them with a mixture of live cells. The goal is to grow replacement parts, using their own stem cells, for people born with defective tickers or experiencing heart failure."

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Interesting engineering opportunities

[G4from128k]

This presents a long-term opportunity for the next phase in body modification. Who says that a "replacement" organ must be identical to the original equipment? Perhaps athletes will opt for an enlarged six-chambered heart or an abdominal booster-heart to improve endurance.

blimey.

[apodyopsis]

if i read the article and the similar one on the BBC correctly then there was a shell of a heart they laced with stem cells that regrew into a heart functionality- but after 8 days operating at 2% so longer growth term is needed to by functional. this would go part way to solving rejection issue obviously, but if i am correct there is one slight problem you cannot take the patients heart, decellularize it and regrow it with stem cells because (1) bad as he heart is he needs it and (2) you still need to manufacture stem cells in sufficient quantity.

so there are a few options I see...

1. one use a dead donor heart as a shell and recellularize (that cannot be the correct term) with the patients stem cells assuming you can get them while he survives on what is left of his old heart and then transplant and hope there is no rejection

2. transplant the patient with an artificial heart until his old one can be repaired in the lab

3. find some way to create a fake heart "shell"? maybe extract some tissue from his current heart but not enough to kill him and create a template that the stem cells can be used to grow him a new heart over a few months.

of course they still need to manufacture a sufficient source of patient stem cells. does this sound reasonable?

of course in the UK, we have just got a new source of donors... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7186007.stm [bbc.co.uk] our prime minister has just decided to add the entire country onto the donor list unless we explicitly opt out. Gill the Arm would be amused...

Re:Interesting engineering opportunities

[bwalling]

This is how we're going to evolve, from here on out.

I seriously hope that I die before that comes to pass. Given the greed in this world, modding humans will only lead to a greater disparity between "have" and "have not." I'd like to hope for better, but it seems like that would just be foolish.

The "other piece" is also nearly there.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In a process called whole organ decellularization, they grew functioning heart tissue by using dead rat and pig hearts as a sort of flesh matrix, and reseeding them with a mixture of live cells. The goal is to grow replacement parts, using their own stem cells, for people born with defective tickers or experiencing heart failure.

Given that another project also underway is "writing" synthetic organs using a rapid prototyping system (3D plotter) loaded with live cells, structural proteins, and growth factors, the salvaged-and-decellularlized organ should be rendered unnecessary in short order.

The fact that a substrate with the right chemical markers can be repopulated into a working organ means the process can proceed in two steps. This may make it easier to accomplish - especially by reducing the need for functioning blood-supply plumbing to provide nutrition and oxygenation in the eary stages of construction.

Re:Wizard of Oz

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually...he never gave ANYTHING to the TinMan, and THAT is what's heartless. Had he actually NOT given him NOTHING then I'd consider that charity!

Re:Install several in parallel

[AJWM]

The hydrodynamics would be interesting. Yeah, two in parallel, synchronized, would probably be simplest from that standpoint, but one wonders what it would do to one's blood pressure. The complications are probably why no animal has ever evolved a double (separate) heart (no vertebrate, anyway). (We need two pumps as it is to compensate for the pressure drop in (1) the lungs and (2) rest of the body, we solve that by making the two pumps beat as one, as it were (our four-chambered heart, one side for venous blood the other for arterial).

Re:Big Step

[KiahZero]

Malnutrition is caused entirely by economics, not a lack of substantive scientific work.