Scientists can now grow a beating human heart from stem cells Posted about 3 hours ago by Louis Doré in tech
A team of scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have used adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue.
The study, published in the journal Circulation Research, detailed that the team took adult skin cells, using a technique called messenger RNA to turn them into pluripotent stem cells, before inducing them to become two different types of cardiac cells.
Then for two weeks they infused the hearts with a nutrient solution, allowing them to develop under the same circumstances a heart would grow inside a human body.
After the two week period, the hearts contained well-structured tissue, which appeared similar to that contained in developing human hearts.
When shocked with electricity, they started beating.
This represents the closest that medical researchers have come to growing an entire beating human heart.
The next step, would be to find a way to help the cells mature faster and perfect the mimicry of conditions under which the heart develops - thus minimising the likelihood of the body rejecting a
Remarkable what the boys in the lab are doing. I just hope its informed by a strongly developed moral sense and not guided by an attitude of "because we can".
Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #2Remarkable what the boys in the lab are doing. I just hope its informed by a strongly developed moral sense and not guided by an attitude of "because we can".
or get rewarded by money or power or status to do it
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams
Illegitimi non Carborundum
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.- Orwell