This GIF (slightly sped up) shows the honeycomb mesh of cells being compressed by contracting heart cells growing along the scaffold (Image: Boyang Zhang).
Engineers at the University of Toronto just made assembling functional heart tissue as easy as fastening your shoes. The team has created a biocompatible scaffold that allows sheets of beating heart cells to snap together just like Velcro™.
“One of the main advantages is the ease of use,” says Professor Milica Radisic (ChemE, IBBME), who led the project. “We can build larger tissue structures immediately before they are needed, and disassemble them just as easily. I don’t know of any other technique that gives this ability.”
Growing heart muscle cells in the lab is nothing new. The problem is that too often, these cells don’t resemble those found in the body. Real heart cells grow in an environment replete with protein scaffolds and support cells that help shape them into long, lean beating machines. In contrast, lab-grown cells often lack these supports, and tend to be amorphous and weak. Radisic and her team focus on engineering artificial environments that more closely imitate what cells see in the body, resulting in tougher, more robust cells.
Two years ago, Radisic and her team invented the Biowire, in which heart cells grew around a silk suture, imitating the way real muscle fibres grow in the heart. “If you think of single fibre as a 1D structure, then the next step is to create a 2D structure and then assemble those into a 3D structure,” says Boyang Zhang a PhD candidate in Radisic’s lab. Zhang and Miles Montgomery, another PhD student in the lab, were co-lead authors on the current work, published today in Science Advances.
Zhang and his colleagues used a special polymer called POMaC to create a 2D mesh for the cells to grow around. It somewhat resembles a honeycomb in shape, except that the holes are not symmetrical, but rather wider in one direction than in another. Critically, this provides a template that causes the cells to line up together. When stimulated with an electrical current, the heart muscle cells contract together, causing the flexible polymer to bend.
Next the team bonded T-shaped posts on top of the honeycomb. When a second sheet is placed above, these posts act like tiny hooks, poking through the holes of honeycomb and clicking into place. The concept the same as the plastic hooks and loops of Velcro™, which itself is based on the burrs that plants use to hitch their seeds to passing animals.
Amazingly, the assembled sheets start to function almost immediately. “As soon as you click them together, they start beating, and when we apply electrical field stimulation, we see that they beat in synchrony,” says Radisic. The team has created layered tissues up to three sheets thick in a variety of configurations, including tiny checkerboards.
The ultimate goal of the project is to create artificial tissue that could be used to repair damaged hearts. The modular nature of the technology should make it easier to customize the graft to each patient. “If you had these little building blocks, you could build the tissue right at the surgery time to be whatever size that you require,” says Radisic. The polymer scaffold itself is biodegradable; within a few months it will gradually break down and be absorbed by the body.
Read more: New “Tissue Velcro” could help repair damaged hearts
The Latest on: Artificial tissue
via Google News
The Latest on: Artificial tissue
- Scientists create synthetic mouse embryos, a potential key to healing humanson August 1, 2022 at 2:10 pm
Stem cell researchers in Israel have created synthetic mouse embryos without using a sperm or egg, then grown them in an artificial womb for eight days, a development that opens a window into a ...
- With the help of a sticky, stretchy material, scientists design a continuous ultrasound systemon August 1, 2022 at 1:50 am
The resulting platform, described in new research published in Science, can be used for tools like wearable ultrasound probes that help provide continuous, hands-free monitoring of internal tissue and ...
- Researchers Partner With NIH and Google to Develop AI Learning Moduleson July 31, 2022 at 10:21 pm
Supplemental grant will help researchers develop cloud-based learning modules focused on using artificial intelligence and machine learning in biomedical sciences.
- Advanced imaging reveals mired migration of neurons in Rett syndrome lab modelson July 29, 2022 at 9:59 am
Using an innovative microscopy method, scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT observed how newborn neurons struggle to reach their proper places in advanced human brain ...
- Kp Tissue Inc stock boosted on Friday.on July 29, 2022 at 8:10 am
Kp Tissue Inc traded under KPT.TO on the TSX stock exchange. A total of 8,242 shares was traded during the session, with total trades of 30. On average, Kp Tissue Inc has traded 5,814 shares over 5 ...
- VistaPath Launches New Collaboration with Gestalt Diagnostics to Further Accelerate Pathology Digitizationon July 28, 2022 at 7:04 am
VistaPath, the leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI)-based, data-driven pathology processing platforms, today announced a new collaboration with Gestalt Diagnostics of Spokane, WA, to ...
- Israeli tech leader launches new human health collaboration to solve urgent real-world problemson July 27, 2022 at 1:51 pm
A new effort is underway to bring together teaching hospitals, different departments at Israel's leading tech university, and commercial companies to focus on solving specific health-related ...
- SMALL CAP IDEA: Tissue Regenix shows regeneration is the way to healthy growthon July 25, 2022 at 7:03 am
Tissue Regenix is part of a vibrant segment of the healthcare industry expected to generate annual revenues of US$6.8billion by 2027 as it grows at a compound annual 14 per cent.
- UCLA advances development of artificial muscleon July 21, 2022 at 12:50 pm
In collaboration with SRI International, UCLA materials scientists have developed a new material and manufacturing process for creating artificial muscle.
- Tissue Regenix: Four-pronged strategy helping deliver on growth aspirationson July 21, 2022 at 8:11 am
If March’s prelims from Tissue Regenix (TRX) marked an inflexion point for the regenerative medical devices specialist, then it was ...
via Bing News