Study in a Sentence: Researchers recently developed an advanced model of adult human heart tissue grown from stem cells by increasing the frequency of electrical stimulation applied to the stem cells as they grew into heart cells. The treatment imitates the exposures of heart tissues during human fetal development and creates human heart tissues in a dish in four weeks, recapitulating many features of real human heart tissue.
Healthy for Humans: The human heart tissue created by the method developed in this study serves as a reliable and affordable human heart model for use in drug development for heart diseases.
Redefining Research: This new human heart model produced responses to a heart medication that are physiologically relevant to humans. The model is capable of recapitulating human heart pathology for experimental studies, supporting its utility for replacing animals for studying human heart diseases.
- Reference link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0016-3?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=93a46057b2-MR&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-93a46057b2-149552969 Ronaldson-Bouchard K, Ma SP, Yeager K, Chen T, Song L, Sirabella D, et al. Advanced maturation of human cardiac tissue grown from pluripotent stem cells. Nature. 2018 Apr;556(7700):239-243. Published online April 4, 2018. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0016-3.