Medicine’s Next Big Thing: Growing Hearts
Reported September 19, 2007
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) — Imagine surviving a heart attack and having laboratory-grown muscle implanted in your heart. Or try to envision being born with a defective heart valve and being able to get a new heart to grow in its place. These are possibilities that could soon become realities.
Chronic heart failure kills thousands each year. A heart transplant is an option, but many patients die waiting for one. Now, cutting edge research offers something better. Researchers at the University of Michigan are growing heart muscle and valves in the lab. A biological replacement could be an almost exact match of the real thing.
“If we think about science fiction, the ability to have a total bio-artificial heart and implant it back into the patient may be a lifesaving option for some cases where there simply is no other option available,” says Ravi Birla, Ph.D., a biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Scientists begin by taking cardiac cells from rats. The cells are then combined with a fibrin gel to make 3-D tissue. Electro-mechanical stimulation from a bioreactor gives the cells the same environment they’re used to in the body. The goal is to put the created tissue back into the body as replacement heart muscle or create new valves, vessels, and ventricles.
“The whole concept of being able to grow tissue-engineered products and the components of the heart, it sort of gives you a reason to wake up in the morning and come to work,” Birla says.
Researchers are still years away from actually using lab-created heart parts in patients, but the experts say this discovery could revolutionize modern medicine.
If you would like more information, please contact:
University of Michigan Health System
Public Relations
(734) 764-2220
University of Michigan
Cardiovascular Center
1500 E. Medical Center Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-5852