It may be too early to pronounce a verdict on the above question, but, the possibility of at least growing a human heart to replace or repair the damaged ones may be possible, over a period of time, if not in the near future. This is due to the reported breakthrough in creating a beating rat heart in a laboratory by the Researchers of University of Minnesota.
In a study reported in the Journal ‘Nature Medicine’, Dr.Doris A. Taylor, head of the team summed up the findings in a single sentence. ‘Give nature the tools and get out of the way’. We just took nature’s own building blocks to build a new organ.
The following methodology was followed to conduct the experiment. The researchers removed the cells from dead rat heart, leaving the valves and other structure as scaffolding for new heart cells injected from newborn rats. The cells formed a new beating heart that conducted electrical impulses and pumped a small amount of blood.
This, the researchers believe can be applied to human beings with modifications. It may be possible to grow a human heart by taking stem-cells from a patient’s bone marrow and placing them in a cadaver heart that has been prepared as a scaffold.
For Ms.Taylor who is relatively new to the field of tissue reengineering, what worked in her own words was her belief in the mantra ‘Trust your crazy ideas’. At times it was the height of craziness especially when she had to go the extent of pouring detergents similar to one in shampoos to wash out cells and inject neonatal cardiac cells. Of course, there wa no immediate breakthrough. Progress came through in fits and starts. All possible mistakes were committed.
But when the results started emerging it was amazing. Subsequent to the injection of heart cells into a scaffold, she and her team had stimulated them electrically and created an artificial circulation as the equivalent of blood pressure to make the heart pump and produce a pulse. The cells also had simultaneously matured. A microscopic examination of the slices of the heart showed that they were living cells. The biological compatibility was also positive as when the new hearts were transplanted into the abdominals of unrelated rats, they were not immediately rejected. Blood supply developed, the hearts beat regularly, cells from the host rats moved in and began to reline the blood vessels even in the wall of growing hearts.
The Possibility of this being applied to human beings would be to obtain them from cadavers, remove their cells to scaffold and then inject bone marrow, muscle or young cardiac cells from a patient. But the process of repopulating the scaffold with new cells would taka a few months.
The implications of the finding could be far-reaching. According to her, If a human heart can be created, why not the other organs? Name the organ, Kidney, Liver, Lung or Pancreas, we can create them.
But take heart and behold; it may take at least another ten years to this to materialize.
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