Currently, there are 4,186 people waiting for the heart transplant in the US, but with a shortage of donors is most likely not all patients survive. By developing a heart transplant in the laboratory has been a long dream in the medical community. A study in the journal Circulation Research has moved one step closer to this dream. The research team has successfully developed beating human heart grown in the lab using stem cells.
Previous research has shown how 3D printers can produce a 3D heart segments using biological materials. Although each heart cell is empty, when compared to the actual. This structure provided the framework, so that heart tissue can grow.
A partly regrown human heart within a bioreactor, which replicates the biological conditions around a normal human heart. (Picture from: http://adf.ly/1YuQhh) |
Currently, a team from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School have taken the collagen 'skeleton' and combined with stem cells to some of the results are truly spectacular.
Roughly 610,000 people die from heart disease in the U.S. every year. Could this revolutionary technique one day save many of those lost to this killer? (Picture from: http://adf.ly/1YuQhh) |
How to grow a heart. (Picture from: http://adf.ly/1YuSXb) |
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