The artificial heart is working!
American scientists have grown beating hybrid heartsAmerican scientists have managed to create living hybrid rat hearts from the connective tissue skeleton of an organ of one animal and stem cells of another.
Such hearts can be transplanted to a stem cell donor without the risk of transplant rejection. Currently, the developers are going to start experimenting with the organs of larger animals and humans.
To create a hybrid organ, researchers from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis treated the heart of a dead animal with a special surfactant to completely remove the "native" cells from it, leaving only an intact connective tissue framework. This skeleton, consisting of collagen, is immunologically inert. Stem cells of another animal were applied to it and the future organ was placed in a kind of incubator, passing blood with nutrients through it and creating pressure on each part of it, simulating conditions in the chest. After a while, a living beating heart grew out of the "blank".
According to the head of the study Doris Taylor, in addition to blood and pressure, the correct differentiation of cells was guided by growth factors that remained "embedded" in the connective tissue framework even after its "laundering". Scientists were able to detect signs of the presence of these substances in experimental organs.
The grown hearts were transplanted into the abdominal cavity of stem cell donor rats. The organs took root, and, as expected, did not cause a rejection reaction. Now it is necessary to check whether the resulting heart muscle is capable of providing sufficient blood circulation throughout the body.
In addition to the heart, similar experiments are being conducted in the laboratory to create hybrid kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, gallbladder and skeletal muscles.
The development of American scientists opens the way to the creation of a theoretically unlimited number of donor organs on skeletons obtained from corpses or animals. Such organs will not cause a rejection reaction and will not require the appointment of toxic immunosuppressants.
Copper news based on New Scientist: Hybrid hearts could solve transplant shortagePortal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru/