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.

University of Toronto

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.

Unsplash

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.