And the beat goes on: Dead rat hearts get second chance

William Atkins
Monday, 14 January 2008 20:16

Science - Biology

Minnesota researchers have found a way to grow new functioning heart tissue from tissue taken off of dead rats. The procedure called whole organ decellularization could some day allow scientists to grow specialized organs so they can be transplanted into human bodies matched for just the right organs.                

U.S. biologist Doris Taylor, who is the director of the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair, at the UM Stem Cell Institute, and her team of researchers used a biotechnology process called decellularization.

In the process they washed away existing heart cells with detergents and other chemicals from the muscle and blood vessels within the hearts of dead rats. What was left was a basic collagen structure—a scaffolding of tubes that once was the blood vessels within the organ.

Taylor’s team injected the collagen structure with immature heart cells from newly born rats. The tissue structure was then fed a solution of nutrients and left to grow on its own.

In about four days the heart tissue began to contract. A pacemaker was used to stabilize the contractions of the heart, along with the introduction of fluids and pressure. Within eight days, the new heart was pumping on its own.

Taylor stated, within a Reuters article, "The hope ultimately—although we've got a ways to go—is that we could take a scaffold from a pig or a cadaver and then take stem or progenitor cells from your body and actually grow a self-derived organ.”

She also stated that other organs, such as kidneys, livers, lungs, muscles, and pancreases, could be potentially generated in the same way, by using the basic structure from organs of human cadavers and the stem cells from the recipients themselves. In this way, the new heart would be very similar to the cells of its new owner, with less likelihood of being rejected after it is transplanted.