Human Stem Cells Revive Mouse's Cell-Stripped Heart

By Vignesh Ramachandran2013-08-15 20:20:34 UTC

Scientists in Pennsylvania have successfully transplanted human stem cells into a mouse's heart intentionally stripped of its own cells. The mouse heart began beating, showing the exciting potential for regenerative medicine.

The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine said researchers first removed all the cells from the mouse's heart to prepare the heart as a "scaffold" on order to test regeneration. In technical terms, this process is called "decellularization." The researchers then repopulated the heart with human cells.

It took a few weeks for the mouse heart to rebuild, but in the end, the heart began contracting at 40 to 50 beats per minute, as explained in the video above. According to the Mayo Clinic, a normal resting heart rate for adults ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute.

The university said it needs to do more work to make this type of regenerated heart "contract strongly enough to be able to pump blood effectively" and figure out how to make the heart correctly regulate its speed.

So, what does this mean for humans?

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and in the world. In fact, one person in the U.S. dies from heart disease every 34 seconds.

The Pittsburgh scientists say regenerative medicine could replace tissue for damage caused during a heart attack. Tissue engineering could also someday yield entire organs for patients.

One of our next goals is to see if its feasible to make a patch of human heart muscle, Lei Yang, an assistant professor of developmental biology at the Pitt School of Medicine, said in a news release. We could use patches to replace a region damaged by a heart attack. That might be easier to achieve because it wont require as many cells as a whole human-sized organ would.

The university said there is potential to take a skin biopsy from a patient in order to develop personalized, special cells that help regenerate a new organ. That replacement organ could someday be sustainable enough to transplant.

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Human Stem Cells Revive Mouse's Cell-Stripped Heart