Researchers from the University of Columbia have recently been able to build a cultured heart muscle mature enough to be useful for medical research.
Investigators at the University of Columbia have developed a new approach to growing in the lab adult-like human heart muscle with the use of very early-stage and easier to manipulate blood-derived human stem cells.
Instead of the nine months it takes for a baby’s heart to develop, they grew a functioning beating heart from stem cells in the time span of four weeks.
This development is a huge step forward in the study of human physiology since it may give researchers a way to test treatments for conditions like heart failure on a lab-grown heart that can mimic a diseased adult one.
