Scientists have been unsuccessfully attempting to generate mature heart cells from stem cells for many years.  Researchers from John Hopkins hospital in the United States may have finally devised a method that will allow heart cells to be created from stem cells in the laboratory.

They recently tested the procedure, successfully taking stem cells from adult rodents and transforming them into heart muscle cells using a live newborn rat as a host.  The newborn rat hearts provide the biological signals necessary to help the implanted heart muscle cells survive.  The research was recently published in the journal Cell Reports.

One of the lead researchers, Dr. Chulan Kwon, explains: “Our concept of using a live animal host to enable maturation of cardiomyocytes can be expanded to other areas of stem cell research and really opens up a new avenue to getting stem cells to mature.”

Previously, researchers were unable to get the heart muscle cells generated by stem cells past an immature stage — even when they let the cells mature in a laboratory for well over a year.  Heart cells at this immature stage have very low pumping force and lack the chemistry or biology of adult heart cells.

The researchers discovered that cells grown in lab dishes weren’t activating the correct genes to allow the cells to reach maturity.  They suspected this occurred because the cells didn’t receive biological signals that are present in the body.

To overcome the problem, they created a cell line of immature heart cells from the embryonic stem cells of mice.  They marked these cells with a fluorescent protein and injected them into rats with deficient immune systems, so the rat’s bodies would not reject the transplant.

They then observed the transplanted cells and watched them become mature cells after a month.  The researchers examined the genes that were found in both the immature heart cells and the mature heart cells to learn more about the relationship between the cells.

The researchers also used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to perform the test with human stem cells.  They found that the process worked, creating mature heart cells.

This breakthrough may help scientists develop treatments that can regenerate heart muscle after it has been damaged.

Source: Mature heart muscle cells created in the laboratory from stem cells

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