Israeli researchers succeeded in printing a heart from induced human stem cells; Will hearts be printed from the patients' own cells in the future?

Researchers at Tel Aviv University announced progress in the direction of producing a patch for the heart after a stroke, and later also printing an entire heart with a printer * They were able to produce a miniature heart from human fat cells with a XNUMXD printer in about three hours. The research findings were published last night in the journal Advanced Science

The process of producing heart cells from stimulated stem cells and printing the heart in a XNUMXD printer. Illustration: Prof. Tal Dvir's laboratory, Tel Aviv University
The process of producing heart cells from stimulated stem cells and printing the heart in a XNUMXD printer. Illustration: Prof. Tal Dvir's laboratory, Tel Aviv University

In the future there is a chance that we will not need organ transplants from the bodies of donors, if the method for printing a whole heart that was demonstrated yesterday at Tel Aviv University at the same time as the article published in the journal Advanced Science. stew. At least, the researchers hope, it will be possible to use the technology to produce heart tissue to replace scarred cells damaged by a heart attack.

Researchers in Prof. Tal Dvir's laboratory at Tel Aviv University succeeded, for the first time in the world, in solving a very significant challenge in modern medicine: using a 2.5D printer and tissues taken from a patient to print a living heart. The cells from which the heart is built were taken from a person's abdominal fat cells, but the diameter of the heart they have reached so far is about XNUMX centimeters, about the size of a rabbit's heart.

The groundbreaking research was carried out by PhD student Nadav Nour and Dr. Assaf Shapira in Prof. Dvir's laboratory, in the School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology in the Faculty of Life Sciences, in the Department of Materials Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, and in the Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology - all at Tel Aviv University.

"Since the technology of 3D printing was invented, researchers all over the world are trying to use it to print, among other things, tissues and organs for transplantation," says Prof. Dvir. "We have developed a new technology, which provides an answer to a significant part of the difficulties that arose along the way."

For the purpose of the study, the researchers used fat tissue taken from a patient, and separated the fat cells from the extracellular collagen material that supports the cells. In an advanced process of genetic engineering, they turned the fat cells into stem cells, and the stem cells created heart muscle cells and cells that form blood vessels. At the same time, they created a kind of 'ink' for printing from the collagenous material. Now they mixed all the ingredients and fed the mixture to the printer, which printed according to computer instructions, according to MRI and CT images of a human heart. The heart printed in this way is composed of very young cells, which are already contracting and showing properties of heart cells. Today, the researchers are working on growing the heart in a special environment (bioreactor), until the cells become mature heart cells that communicate with each other and work with maximum efficiency. The researchers hope that printed hearts of this type will be implanted in animals in the coming year, in order to test their function.

"The method we developed makes it possible to print a heart of any desired size, and since the printed heart is made from the patient's own tissues, the body will not reject it," Prof. Dvir concludes. , which completely eliminated the need for organ donations. When a patient needs a transplant, tissue will be taken from his body, from which an appropriate organ will be printed in size and properties, which will be implanted in his body."

In a conversation with journalists, Prof. Dvir explained: "Heart muscle cells are not cells that divide, we just want them to contract in a synchronized manner. At the same time, we are working on patches designed to treat heart attacks, but as part of the proof of programming, we showed that we are also able to print an entire heart."

"It's not yet in the clinic, we're still conducting experiments with the biomaterials in pigs, but in the next steps we'll transplant an entire patch. We want to transplant the hearts within a year or two in small animals - a rabbit, a rat. As soon as something is commercialized, it's out of my hands. The cost at the moment Doing it in a laboratory is not like that in heaven, but when you want to do it in humans, you have to do it in much more sterile conditions. The amount of cells is much larger."

In response to the question of what is the difference between the development of the group at Tel Aviv University and other groups in the world and in Israel dealing in similar fields, Prof. Dvir said: "Companies print the material itself but without cells, others print the patches with cells but without blood vessels. In addition, with us one of the advantages The big ones are that the cells come from the patient himself. Others use off-the-shelf materials, but they are not customized for the patient and this encourages an immune response."

In a conversation with the Hidan site, Dr. Assaf Shapira, who is also a participant in the research, explains the process: "We take fat tissue from the patient whose heart we want to touch and this tissue is separated into its components, cells and extracellular material - mainly collagen. We engineer the cells using genetic engineering, turning them into induced stem cells, and then we can sort them into the types of cells we want, in this case, one population of heart muscle cells, and the other population - cells that form blood vessels."
"The significant development is the combination of the ability to accurately print in 3D heart tissue and even a model of an entire heart when both the tissue and the entire heart contain blood vessels and all the anatomical shape required for function, and in addition, all the materials used for printing are customized."
Not only the cells themselves are personalized, but the shape of the heart. A CT scan of the patient's heart is taken, according to which the blood vessels are engineered, and then it can be glued to the area that has been damaged, for example in a heart attack, of course it is seeded with cardiovascular cells and slowly that patch undergoes fusion With the heart, strengthens that damaged part and restores its activity. Little by little the cells start talking to each other. At Patch, we recently conducted an experiment with pigs and saw an improvement. The technology of dimension printing gave us the possibility to produce in high resolution even according to the patient's own anatomy. "

How long does it take to print a heart?
"The small model takes between 3.5 and 4 hours and, of course, if the heart is larger, the time is longer depending on it, but the machines are also being improved from time to time. When we take a fat sample and turn it into induced stem cells, the induced stem cells can reproduce and then we multiply them in test tubes. Once they are sorted, you can Their division decreases, but until then they multiply in large numbers, many millions. Since the cells have the ability to divide as stem cells, not much needs to be spent cells from the body."

But the heart has many more than two types of cells?
Dr. Shapira: "There are more types of cells, but we are currently showing the ability. We can multiply many more types of cells, but the printer. Our machine is capable of printing four types of cells."

Why do fat cells turn into heart cells?
"The specific adipose tissue we want to use is easy to obtain, a minimally invasive surgery where we extract fat from the omentum, adipose tissue that shields the intestine like a curtain in the abdominal cavity."

XNUMXD heart printing process. Photo: Tel Aviv University spokesperson
XNUMXD heart printing process. Photo: Tel Aviv University spokesperson
XNUMXD heart printing process. Photo: Tel Aviv University spokesperson
XNUMXD heart printing process. Photo: Tel Aviv University spokesperson

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Comments

  1. Why do we always pay the price of our desire to rush forward?
    Answer: Because they are too weak to resist and they are unable to speak. But they are able to scream when they are hurt or when they are confined for years in sterile cages in laboratory rooms. Solution: This part is hidden from public view.
    Prof. Tal Dvir already said in an interview that many volunteers approached him to perform the experiments, so what's the problem? Will it be more difficult? That the rate of progress will slow down? All of this does not justify assigning the HC to experiments against their will. We as humanity have no moral justification for doing this simply because it shortens our path. It is possible that if HC experiments were forbidden we would be many years behind, but it is possible not because other methods would have been developed . Either way, we do not have the right to accelerate progress at the expense of the weak. A life-saving advance? It's clear, but it's also clear to everyone that even for saving lives, not everything is allowed - to avoid experiments on humans (prisoners, retarded, etc.) even though it's clear that they would speed up progress.
    It seems that an organized crime is being committed here that all of humanity cooperates with only because it is for the benefit of humanity. Everyone secretly knows this is a crime (hence the cover-ups) but everyone turns a blind eye with a common wink and so it continues to be committed. For the animals it is an indescribable suffering, for us - a light hit in the wing. But it must be remembered that general consent to the commission of a crime does not qualify it, especially not so serious a crime.

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