14 DAY TRIAL // If Dr. Frankenstein were real, his achievements would surely fail in comparison to those of a team of US scientists who have recently managed to engineer a working mouse heart using human stem cells as their raw material.
In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature Communications this past August 13, the researchers explain that, in order to engineer the beating organ, they started by collecting a heart from a dissected mouse.
The organ was then soaked in enzymes and detergents that dissolved and removed the cells forming it.
Thus, all that was left was a three-dimensional structure made up of connective tissues alone.
According to Medical Daily, this structure acted as a scaffold to which the scientists attached heart cells obtained from human stem cells.
The same source details that the stem cells used to piece together this mouse heart were actually skin cells at the beginning of this series of experiments.
Thus, the scientists resorted to several hormone treatments to turn them into pluripotent stem cells, otherwise known as iPS cells.
Later on, they exposed them to a growth factor that turned them into endothelial cells, cardiomyocytes and smooth muscle cells.
These three types of cells are all essential cellular components of a normal heart, the researchers explain.
By the looks of it, once the stem cells were attached to the three-dimensional connective tissues structure and administered the growth factor, it took merely 20 days for them to form a heart that not only contracted, but also responded to drugs.
“After 20 days of perfusion, the engineered heart tissues exhibit spontaneous contractions, generate mechanical force and are responsive to drugs,” the scientists write in the Abstract to their paper.
The researchers expect that their breakthrough will pave the way to personalized heart transplants. They also hope that it will significantly increase the survival chances of people diagnosed with various heart diseases.
“Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world. Heart tissue engineering holds a great promise for future heart disease therapy by building personalized heart tissues,” they say.