Hearts beat anew
Growing replacement parts is on the
menu.
Professor Doris Taylor
We’ve all seen the 30-second sound bites on TV with trite Frankenstein jokes. I thought I’d offer up a bit more detail:
US scientists have coaxed recycled hearts taken from animal cadavers into beating in the laboratory after reseeding them with live cells…
The core procedure making this possible is called decellularisation.
In this process, all the cells from an organ — in this case the heart of a dead rat — are stripped away using powerful detergents, leaving only a bleached-white scaffolding composed of proteins secreted by the cells.
In the experiments, this matrix was then injected with a mixture of cells taken from newborn rat hearts and placed in a sterile lab setting, where the scientists hoped it would grow.
After only four days, contractions started, and on the eighth day, the hearts were pumping, according to the study…
“When we saw the first contractions, we were speechless,” said Harald Ott, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.
More detail in the article, of course. Photos, more notes and a video from the University of Minnesota are here.
Posted: Tue - January 15, 2008 at 12:52 PM