Approximately 4,186 Americans are on the heart transplant list. Many will probably die due to donor shortage. But did you know that scientists might grow a transplantable heart in labs? This is a dream that will soon come true.
A study that was published in the journal Circulation Research proved that a group of researchers had grown a beating human heart using stem cells.
Previous research had been focused on using 3D printers to make 3D heart segments using biological material. These structures do not have any heart cells, but provide a scaffold on which real tissue might grow.
Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School combined those findings with stem cells. The results are brilliant.
Heart transplants might cause complications, and the body might reject the new heart, registering it as a threat. It'll end up destroying it, and patients are required to take medication to suppress their immunity.
For the needs of the study, researchers immersed 73 human hearts (unsuitable for transplantation) in solutions of detergent to remove any cells which might trigger the self-destructive response. They were left with the scaffold of the human heart, filled with blood vessels.
Pluripotent stem cells might become bone, nerve, and even muscle cells in the body.
Researchers managed to turn human skin cells into pluripotent stems cells which were later induced into becoming heart cells. Those cells could grow on the scaffold when soaked in a nutrient solution.
Around 610,000 Americans die from heart disease every year. The new findings might bring this number down.
In two week, the cells were part of immature hearts. When researchers used electricity, the hearts began beating. The body might consider those cells “friendly.” The original skin cells have to be sourced from the same body.
Jacques Guyette, a biomedical researcher at the MGH Center for Regenerative Medicine and lead author of the study, said that his team would try to improve the methods, and generate more cardiac cells.
“Growing” a new heart requires “tens of billions” heart cells, and researchers “made” 500 million stem cell-derived heart cells.
That brings us a step closer towards providing a new, healthy organ to patients waiting for a heart transplant.
Researchers have developed many techniques in the past decade, but that's the most incredible method ever. There are many people waiting for a second chance, and those hearts might be the only hope they have. Hopefully, researchers will finish what they began and provide a new heart to those in need.
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