Scientists Grew A Piece Of The Human Heart In A Lab, And It Beats Perfectly Too!
Engineers have managed to a grow a major piece of the heart in a miniature form. And guess what? It beats!?
Researchers from the University of Toronto and University of Montreal in Canada reverse-engineered a millimetre-long vessel that beats like a biological vessel would. That's not all!
This reverse-engineered vessel also pumps fluid "just like the muscular exit-chamber of a human embryo's heart," ScienceAlert reported.
"With our model, we can measure ejection volume ¨C how much fluid gets pushed out each time the ventricle contracts ¨C as well as the pressure of that fluid," Sargol Okhovatian from the University of Toronto said.
Why would scientists grow a heart piece?
With this, scientists could better understand drugs and therapies for treating heart problems while studying how cardiovascular conditions develop in humans. Current methods offer limited options to study a diseased or even a healthy heart.
Most enquiries depend on organs removed after autopsy. The problem with these organs is that they don't give a glimpse into how they perform in real time. Enter 3D models - the future of studying organs that behave just like natural organs.
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The new heart-like organ was developed in a lab using a mix of synthetic and biological materials. The cells were procured from cardiovascular tissues of young rats, then grown on scaffold printed out of a polymer. It had grooves to direct the tissue's growth.
The structure mimics the human left ventricle - the heart's final chamber that pumps blood into the aorta. With some electrical shocks, the cardiac muscles began to beat.
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Until now, there have only been a handful of attempts to create a truly 3D model of a ventricle, as opposed to flat sheets of heart tissue," senior author Milica Radisic from the University of Toronto said.
While the model cannot mimic the complexity and accuracy of a heart pumping blood, it's still a stepping stone to developing more robust 3D models of the human heart.
What do you think about this lab-grown piece of the human heart? Let us know in the comments below.?For?more in the world of?technology?and?science, keep reading?Indiatimes.com.?
References
Irving, T. (2022, July 8). Reverse engineering the heart: U of T Engineering team creates bioartificial left ventricle. U of T Engineering News.?
McRae, M. (2022). Engineers Have Grown a Major Piece of The Human Heart in Miniature, And It Beats. ScienceAlert.?
