Big step forward for organ biofabrication: By recreating the helical structure of heart muscle, researchers increase understanding of how the heart beats - Azi News
Heart disease – the leading cause of death in the US – is so deadly in part because the heart, unlike other organs, cannot repair itself after injury. That is why tissue engineering, which ultimately includes the wholesale manufacture of whole human hearts for transplantation, is so important to the future of cardiac medicine. To build the human heart from the ground up, researchers needed to replicate the unique structures that make up the heart. This includes recreating the helical geometry, which creates a circular motion when the heart beats. It has long been theorized that this circular motion is essential for pumping blood at high volumes, but proving it is difficult, in part because creating hearts with different geometries and alignments is a challenge. Now, bioengineers from Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed the first biohybrid model of the human ventricle with helically aligned beating heart cells, and have shown that