The tissue does not contain some of the key features found in natural heart tissue, but it beats at a uniform rate, like the heart
By: Tamara Traubman
Technion researchers have created beating heart tissue. The tissue was made from human embryonic stem cells - cells found in embryos, which can become any of the types of cells in the body.
In the first step, the researchers let the stem cells differentiate into different cell types. Then, from the multitude of cells that were created, they removed an area that became heart tissue. The tissue does not contain some of the key features found in natural heart tissue. However, the tests done by the researchers showed that the small tissue beats at a uniform rate, like a heart.
"Such tissue may be used as a model that will allow research into how drugs affect the heart," said the head of the research team, Dr. Lior Gepstein from the Rapaport Institute at the Technion's Faculty of Medicine and the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. "Today we do not have any laboratory model for a human heart, and we cannot know exactly what the effect of drugs will be, but only when they are tried on humans."
The tissue the researchers received cannot yet be used as a model for investigating the effect of substances on the heart, but according to Dr. Gepstein, this is an "important first step." A report describing the research findings in the scientific journal Circulation Research
In the past, other researchers have created heart cells, but according to Dr. Gepstein, "the uniqueness of our work is that we have combined the technology of differentiating human embryonic stem cells into heart tissue, together with an innovative electrical recording system that makes it possible to observe the electrical activity of heart tissue at a microscopic level."
