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Medical breakthough may lead to growing replacement organs
Story By: Bea Karnes
Source: NBC
Researchers seeking new treatments for heart disease managed to grow a rat heart in the lab and start it beating. "We're willing to admit that it's a crazy idea," said Dr. Doris Taylor, Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota.
Researchers say this crazy idea could one day be used to save thousands of lives. Taylor said roughly 3,000 Americans die every year because there aren't enough hearts for transplants.
University of Michigan researchers began their quest with the dead heart of a rat. Using a detergent, they washed away all of the heart's cells. Left with a gelatin-like framework, scientists injected new heart cells from newborn rats into the framework. Within a week the heart was beating and pumping once again.
While a rat heart can't help a human, a pig heart can. "It looks like a human heart. It acts like a human heart," Taylor explained. Taylor said her goal is to one day be able to take a pig heart framework, or a human cadaver heart framework, and inject a potential transplant recipient's own stem cells into the framework and then grow a heart that matches the recipient's body, thereby eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs. "What we've done is hopefully open a door to the idea that we can actually being to build, not just pieces of tissue and organs, but build organs," Taylor said.
Researchers also believe they'll one day be able to create new livers, pancreas, kidneys, and lungs, saving not just thousands, but millions of lives. "It's really been science fiction in the past," Taylor said. "And we've liked to think that we've helped make it science."
