Recycled Hearts for Humans
How Animal Organ Transplants May Help People with Cardiac Disease
These bioartificial hearts may make cardiac patient treatments easier and more effective. Recycled animal hearts are an astounding breakthrough in treating heart disease.
Recycling isn’t just about milk cartons and tin cans. Researchers from the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair have successfully restarted dead rat and pig hearts using live tissue from recipient bodies.
Animal organ transplants - hearts in particular - are important because nearly 550,000 Americans are diagnosed with heart disease every year. More than 50,000 people die waiting for heart transplants.
How bioartificial or recycled hearts are created
This is the first study of its kind. Scientists clean out the cells of the dead pig’s heart – leaving only the outside structure or extracellular matrix – and implant live cells. “The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells,” says lead researcher Dr. Doris Taylor, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair and professor of medicine and physiology. After the heart is cleaned, it is injected with a mixture of progenitor cells from neonatal or newborn rat or pig hearts.
This process of decellularization, or creating a “bioartificial heart”, doesn’t happen overnight. Four days after reseeding the heart matrix with live cells, the scientists observed the first signs of life. “When we saw the first contractions we were speechless,” said co-investigator Dr. Harold C. Ott. Eight days after this, the hearts were actually pumping.
When Dr Taylor sliced open the new hearts, she saw the cells had grown even though they used immature heart cells. “The cells have many of the markers we associate with the heart and seem to know how to behave like heart tissue,” she says. Dr Taylor is optimistic about increasing the organ donor pool, which is currently limited. Transplanted human hearts often involve life-long struggles with the immune system, high blood pressure, diabetes or kidney failure. The patient has overcome his heart problems, but unfortunately faces new health difficulties.
Bioartificial or recycled hearts less likely to be rejected
A recycled heart with the recipient’s own cells is much less likely to be rejected by the body. Theoretically, it could be regenerated and regulated the same way as the original heart because the body nourishes its own cells. “It opens a door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas – you name it and we hope we can make it,” says Dr. Taylor. “Going forward, our goal is to use a patient’s stem cells to build a new heart.”
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Source: University of Minnesota (2008, January 14). "Beating Heart Created In Laboratory: Method May Revolutionize How Organ Tissues Are Developed." ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 14, 2008.
