Researchers and the University of Minnesota have rebuilt a mouse heart from the ground up using stems cells and a "scaffold" consisting of a rat's heart with all the cardiac muscles removed. The group hopes that the method might eventually be used to build hearts for transplant using a donor heart as a base, covered with muscles grown using stems cells harvested from the eventual recipient. This method might also be employed for building other organs for transplant. Much work still needs to be done to make this a reality: the test heart was operating at only 2% efficiency, indicating that a number of fundamental issues need to be identified and resolved. |