According to an article in the journal Advanced Science, researchers at Tel Aviv University were able to create a small 3D-printed heart that included blood vessels out of human tissue.
Until now, researchers have only been able to print simple tissues lacking blood vessels, so a 3D, fully vascularized engineered heart is a step in the right direction.
The process consists of taking a sample of abdominal fat tissue, reprogramming the cells to become induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), differentiating these into cardiac muscle cells and blood vessel cells, and combining them with hydrogels to form structures for the cells to proliferate on.
Heart disease causes one in four deaths in the US (about 610,000 people a year), and there's a shortage of heart donors for transplants, so 3D-printed hearts could help solve a major issue
As a next step, the team plans to culture, print, and transplant similar hearts into animals. Significant challenges still remain, such as the efficient cultivation of the stem cells to gain the large quantity needed to engineer full-size organs and improvement of the blood vessel network demonstrated; the team indicates we are many, many years from from doing this for humans.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 17 2019, @01:33AM (2 children)
How's the neural conduction? Valving? Does this Frankenheart pump even 30% of what a real heart can do? And, how long does it maintain cohesion of the structure (i.e. when do the cells start growing outside the scaffolding?)
Vascularization is certainly progress, but call me when the heart lasts longer than the post-surgical recovery period: 6 months+ for a cracked chest procedure, IIRC.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:13AM
No neural conduction at all (see my comment below), no pumping at all, (they can make the cells contract, but not pump) it has valves, they just don't work correctly yet.
Here is a much better, far more detailed article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.201900344 [wiley.com]
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(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday April 17 2019, @03:03AM
Pig hearts are more likely to fill the gap.. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/12/06/pig-human-heart-transplant-xenotransplantation/ [discovermagazine.com]
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