Human heart grow and ticking in the Lab

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)

The main problem of the heart transplant, in addition to the lack of donors, is that there is a possibility that the recipient's body will reject the new organ. Their immune systems will often recognize the strange tissue as a threat, where it will be attacked and destroyed. The only way to stop this is the consumption of medications that suppress the immune system, and this is only successful in some cases.

How to grow a heart. (Picture from: http://adf.ly/1YuSXb)

In this study, 73 human hearts is considered unsuitable for transplantation are carefully soaked in a detergent solution to separate them from the cells that will provoke self-destructive response. Until the end, all that remains is the collagen skeleton of heart, complete with elaborate structures and vessels, providing a new foundation for a new heart cells that will grow.

They were then induced to be two types of heart cells, which are easy to grow and thrive on the current skeleton is bathed in a nutrient solution. After two weeks, the network of cells grown almost like the adult heart, but with a complicated structure. A team of researchers gave the cells an electric shock, and then the heart starts beating really. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | DAILYMAIL | IFLSCIENCE!]

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