Forum Home | Log in | Signup | My Page | Rules | FAQ | Boards | Members | Search
« GRITZ Home | Email msg. | Reply to msg. | Post new | Board info. Previous | Home | Next

Scientists develop patch of living cells that can repair damaged hearts 

By: De_Composed in GRITZ | Recommend this post (1)
Tue, 04 Feb 25 8:37 AM | 17 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Grits Breakfast of Champeens! 		Msg. 03496 of 04536
Jump:
Jump to board:
Jump to msg. #

February 3, 2025

Scientists develop patch of living cells that can repair damaged hearts

by Hans Bader
LibertyUnyielding.com


“For heart transplants there is a shortage of available organs, while artificial heart pumps are expensive and come with a high rate of complications. Now scientists believe they have made a breakthrough by creating implantable patches composed of beating heart muscle that can help the organ contract,” reports The Guardian. Co-inventor Ingo Kutschka, a German medical professor, says that “we now have, for the first time, a laboratory grown biological transplant available…to stabilise and strengthen the heart muscle.”

As The Guardian explains,The patches are made from cells taken from blood and ‘reprogrammed’ to act as stem cells, which can develop into any cell type in the body.

In the case of the patches, these cells are turned into heart muscle and connective tissue cells. They are embedded in a collagen gel and grown in a custom-made mould before the resulting hexagonal patches are attached, in arrays, to a membrane. For humans this membrane is about 5cm by 10cm in size.

Professor Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann said the muscle in the patches had the characteristics of a heart that was just four to eight years old. “We are implanting young muscle into patients with heart failure,” he said.

The team say the patches are an important development because directly injecting heart muscle cells into the heart can lead to the growth of tumours or result in the development of an irregular heartbeat – which can be deadly. The patches, however, allow many more heart muscle cells to be administered with a higher retention and, it appears, no risk of such unwanted effects.

Scientists are also working on other ways to grow heart and lung tissue, such as “stimulating existing heart-muscle cells—those that survive a heart attack—to proliferate.”

Last year, a patient was given a 3D-printed windpipe, using an organ shaped by a 3D-printer: “The patient’s new organ is built with cartilage and mucosal lining (the moist lining that you get in some of your organs and body cavities like your lungs and nose). The scientists obtained nasal stem cells and cartilage cells from other patients to create these elements – cells which were discarded during a procedure to treat nasal congestion and from a nasal septum surgery. But the 3D-printed windpipe also contains polycaprolactone (PCL) for structural support, as well as bio-ink. Rather than the ink you might see in your printer at home, bio-ink carries the living cells needed to create living tissue in 3D-bioprinting.”

Scientists are also working on turning spleens into functioning livers for people with liver damage.

Scientists have also developed tiny robots made of human cells to repair damaged cells. Nanorobots are also being used to fight cancer. “In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University scientists…have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply,” reported Next Big Future.

A gene-edited kidney transplant allowed a monkey to survive for two years, a scientific advance that could be used in the future to help increase the supply of kidneys for people who currently can’t get one. Even without genetic modifications, a pig kidney worked for a month in a brain-dead man it was transplanted into.

http://libertyunyielding.com/2025/02/03/scientists-develop-patch-of-living-cells-that-can-repair-damaged-hearts/

» You can also:
« GRITZ Home | Email msg. | Reply to msg. | Post new | Board info. Previous | Home | Next