Artificial Jellyfish Built From Silicone and Rat Cells

ananyo writes "Bioengineers have made an artificial jellyfish using silicone and muscle cells from a rat's heart. The synthetic creature, dubbed a medusoid, looks like a flower with eight petals. When placed in an electric field, it pulses and swims exactly like its living counterpart. The team now plans to build a medusoid using human heart cells. The researchers have filed a patent to use their design, or something similar, as a platform for testing drugs (abstract). 'You've got a heart drug?' says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. 'You let me put it on my jellyfish, and I'll tell you if it can improve the pumping.'" The video that accompanies the text is at once beautiful and creepy.

Other issues

[colinrichardday]

Of course, you still need to test for side effects. Is a drug hepatotoxic?

Overthinking it?

[wonkey_monkey]

'You've got a heart drug?' says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. 'You let me put it on my jellyfish, and I'll tell you if it can improve the pumping.'"

Couldn't they, I dunno, just put it in a rat?

Re:Why?

[jehan60188]

the artificial jellyfish will (eventually) be made of human heart cells, which will allow for different research vectors for heart medicine

Re:Other issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yes, thank, but no one was claiming this did away with all existing drug testing. This fills a gap: that is, what will actually happen if, all other things being equal, you introduced a drug to the cells of the heart? That answer can only currently be answered by human trials. This gives you data before you reach that stage.

Re:Other issues

[Electricity Likes Me]

No way to know, but being able to observe "drug in large doses causes immediate cessation of pumping" would be a pretty important thing to find out - animal models have had some fairly notable failures when transferred to humans. [wikipedia.org]

Being able to stick drugs in a model organism based on human tissue would be a huge development.

First steps - this *IS* useful

[DrYak]

It's a small part, but it's an important one. You need to check if a potential drug can make the muscle cell work differently (mostly for drugs targeting heart cells: pump stronger).
A human heart could react in a different way. But on the other hand, this jelly fish would have a better reaction than a simple isolated cell on a petri dish.
The petri dish cell is mostly only useful to test for basic molecular response (does the ion flux increase across the cell-wall transporter when the drug is bound to it ?)
With platform like the jelly fish you can also test the effect - like cell contraction.