2008 Woodie Awards
Pumping heart crafted from stem cells
sarah westen
Sarah Westen
Issue date: 1/17/08 Section: Sci/Tech
On January 13, BBC News reported "the stripped-out shell of a heart has been made to work again."
The so-called "spare part heart" was designed by a team of scientists from the University of Minnesota. In their study, the team removed all the muscle cells in a rat heart, leaving only a scaffold of tissues including blood vessels and heart valves. The scientists added heart cells to the scaffold, which grew to produce pumping action.
The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, gives hope that ultimately human or animal hearts can be crafted for transplant. Dr. Doris Taylor, of the University of Minnesota, says "It opens a door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas - you name it and we hope we can make it."
BBC News reports that experts believe failing organs in humans could be replaced by new versions grown using stem cells.
Stem cells are the body's master cells and potentially can be transformed into any cell type in the body. Properties of stem cells include self-renewal, the ability to go through numerous cycles of cell division while maintaining the undifferentiated state; and potency, the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell types.
An organ constructed through the use of stem cells would have a significant advantage over donor organs for transplantation because the risk of rejection by the immune system would be substantially decreased.
"One of the biggest obstacles to developing three-dimensional organs is finding a way to persuade cells to form the complex structures needed," comments BBC News. The University of Minnesota researchers decided to use another heart as a template to persuade stem cells to grow into functioning heart cells.
The team took an adult rat heart, bathed in detergents which removed all cardiac cells, and which left a "frame" of other heart tissues forming the basic shape of the organ. Cardiac cells taken from a newborn rat were planted into the frame.
The so-called "spare part heart" was designed by a team of scientists from the University of Minnesota. In their study, the team removed all the muscle cells in a rat heart, leaving only a scaffold of tissues including blood vessels and heart valves. The scientists added heart cells to the scaffold, which grew to produce pumping action.
The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, gives hope that ultimately human or animal hearts can be crafted for transplant. Dr. Doris Taylor, of the University of Minnesota, says "It opens a door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas - you name it and we hope we can make it."
BBC News reports that experts believe failing organs in humans could be replaced by new versions grown using stem cells.
Stem cells are the body's master cells and potentially can be transformed into any cell type in the body. Properties of stem cells include self-renewal, the ability to go through numerous cycles of cell division while maintaining the undifferentiated state; and potency, the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell types.
An organ constructed through the use of stem cells would have a significant advantage over donor organs for transplantation because the risk of rejection by the immune system would be substantially decreased.
"One of the biggest obstacles to developing three-dimensional organs is finding a way to persuade cells to form the complex structures needed," comments BBC News. The University of Minnesota researchers decided to use another heart as a template to persuade stem cells to grow into functioning heart cells.
The team took an adult rat heart, bathed in detergents which removed all cardiac cells, and which left a "frame" of other heart tissues forming the basic shape of the organ. Cardiac cells taken from a newborn rat were planted into the frame.
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