メディエイゴ

In a medical first, University researchers(1) have created a beating heart in the laboratory(2). Using detergents(3), they stripped away(4) the cells(5) from rat hearts until only the nonliving(6) matrix(7) was left; they then repopulated(8) the matrix with fresh heart cells.

If perfected, the technique may be used someday to generate(9) new hearts for patients. In the United States alone, about 5 million people live with heart failure(10), 550,000 new cases are diagnosed(11) every year, and 50,000 die waiting for a donor(12) heart. The work is published online(13) in the January 13 issue(14) of Nature Medicine.

"The results were a home run(15)," says Doris Taylor, director of the University's Center for Cardiovascular Repair(16) and a principal investigator(17) on the study. "We knew that cell therapy(18)--that is, transplanting(19) cells into the heart--is not a panacea(20). So we started thinking, 'Is there a way to use cells to engineer(21) heart tissue(22)?'"

The idea, she says, is to create whole new blood vessels(23) or organs(24) by implanting(25) a patient's own cells into a matrix derived from(26) a donor organ. This approach ought to(27) bypass(28) the problem of organ rejection(29) because the matrix, being devoid of(30) cells, shouldn't provoke(31) an immune response(32). Even if it did, the new cells would lay down(33) a fresh matrix of their own, which would turn off(34) the immune response and free(35) patients from the need to take immunosuppressive drugs(36).

The process, called whole organ recellularization(37), can be done "with virtually(38) any organ," Taylor says.