When will an artificial heart become a reality?
Biophysicist Konstantin Agladze – about the problems, prospects and cost of growing a heart and other organs
Within the framework of the project "Where is a high-tech business born?", post-science experts talk about promising research tasks, the solution of which will not only produce a scientific and technological breakthrough, but will also have a noticeable economic effect. Biophysicist Konstantin Agladze, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor at MIPT, specialist in tissue engineering of the heart, talks about the current state and prospects of artificial tissues and organs.
Today there are several serious problems associated with the creation of a complex structural multicellular organ.
One of the main tasks is to obtain a three-dimensional heart wall tissue as thick as a finger or two. The thickness depends on which wall of the ventricle it is and which ventricle, right or left. We can already obtain monolayers of cells and grow such tissues. The problem is to simultaneously grow a vascular bed with muscle tissue, through which this muscle tissue will be supplied with oxygen and nutrients and metabolic products will be excreted. Without a vascular bed, without adequate supply, the cells in the thick layer will naturally die. In the thin layer, they can feed due to the diffusion of nutrients and oxygen, and in the thick layer, diffusion is no longer enough, and the deep layers of cells will die. Now we can make about three layers of heart cells that are able to survive.
This is the main fundamental task that needs to be solved first. After that, it will be possible to start solving the following.
For example, when talking about promising implants, it should be remembered that the vascular bed of the implant will need to be connected to the vascular bed that already exists in another part of the recipient's heart. That is, you need to grow a vascular bed of a certain anatomy.
Growing a whole heart with its many divisions, cells and its own conducting system is a very complex multicellular task.
An exact copy of the human heart can be obtained in about 7-10 years in well-equipped laboratories in developed countries.
As for the heart wall, having solved the problem of vascularization, implants suitable for testing can be obtained within 2-3 years.
Today in the United States, a relatively simple coronary artery bypass surgery costs from 30 to 50 thousand dollars, depending on the clinic and the complexity of the case. With this operation, the chest and heart are simply opened, a bypass is placed on the arteries damaged by atherosclerosis.
Now imagine that you need to sew a whole piece on the wall of the heart, which you first need to grow. When these procedures are already developed, the cost can reach 500 thousand dollars.
In 7-10 years, this task will be solved in one form or another in principle. And here it is worth saying that it can be solved in a non-trivial way. The fact is that the main task of the heart is pumping. The heart is not a gland that produces hormones, it is a pump. We need the blood to be pumped and not injured during pumping.
Blood injury is just the problem of external pumps that are used in heart surgery. When they were first developed, the main difficulty was that red blood cells and other blood elements were damaged by these pumps.
The modern development of materials can lead to the creation of a mechanical heart that can be sewn so that it can safely perform the functions of a biological heart that nature gives to man. It's just a polymer pump made of biocompatible materials. Already today there are examples of installing an auxiliary pump for the ventricle, usually the left one, since it is he who drives the blood in a large circle.
In the future, 5-10 years will become clear whether it is worth spending time and effort to grow a new heart, or it will be easier to put a mechanical heart to a person.
If we talk about imported systems in general, then the heart is not the most convenient object here. It is more reasonable to promote experiments on liver or kidney tissues. For example, liver strips easily survive on their own and grow relatively easily. To give a person whose liver is affected by cirrhosis a new part of the liver that could begin to regenerate and grow by itself is a much more reasonable application of forces.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.11.2014