A promising prediction by British scientists: within 15 years it will be possible to grow a heart for transplant in the laboratory
Within 15 years, scientists will be able to grow a human heart in the laboratory - thus paving the way for performing heart transplants more easily and safely. This assessment was provided by Prof. David Williams, from the University of Liverpool, in a discussion among scientists on tissue engineering that took place as part of the British "Science Week".
To promote the idea of a method for growing a heart in the laboratory, the British government set aside a special budget of 10 million pounds. The goal: to place Britain as a world center of research and development for the creation of replacement human organs and tissues, using methods of tissue engineering and genetic engineering. All of these are intended for transplants.
Prof. Williams stated that there has recently been a turning point regarding the approach to creating human tissues in the laboratory, and to reproducing organs and parts of body systems, for medical uses in general. This is thanks to the progress made in tissue engineering research. One of the ways to do this: taking cells from the patient's own body, in order to grow organs in the laboratory especially for him, instead of the damaged ones.
The scientists talk about the fact that this mode of operation will make it possible to grow skin, cartilage, hip bones, knee joints, heart valves, parts of the vascular system and later - even whole organs such as the heart, liver, pancreas and kidneys. Some of these organs require particularly complex three-dimensional design and the use of considerable biochemical knowledge.
According to the scientists, the heart is a "unique and mysterious organ". It was only in 1628 that William Harvey discovered the secret of the circulatory system of the heart and its structure.
An elephant's heart rate is 25 beats per minute, while a human's heart rate is 70 beats per minute, or about half a billion beats in one lifetime, and this without taking into account an increase in heart rate due to emotional reasons or effort.
Heart diseases were not known, in fact, before 1900. The first diagnosis of heart disease was made only in 1912 by the American doctor James Herrick - and today it is also known that heart diseases are the number one cause of death. 1 in the western world. The first heart surgery in history was performed only in 1938, and in 1967 the South African heart surgeon Christian Barnard created the great revolution when he performed the first heart transplant. But in doing so he also raised a series of ethical problems and complex moral questions. For example: Is it appropriate for a person to continue living when another person's heart beats in his body? Will the transplant change his character, his "kindness" (or vice versa)?
Also, the problem of rejection of the tissues emerged, and the action of drugs that suppress the body's immune system, and are given to transplant recipients in order to allow the absorption of foreign tissues. Financial questions related to the transplant surgeries also arose: Is it appropriate to spend so much money on a complex surgery for the needs of one person - or maybe society has completely different, more important needs, in order to spend its money on them?
It wasn't until 1982 that scientists developed the first artificial heart - but it turns out that these plastic and titanium devices break down and break just like other machines. Following this, the race was launched to find ways to create a natural heart, in the laboratory.
The idea that makes use of the treated person's tissues, which will be taken from him in order to grow a heart from them that will later be re-implanted in his body - is the right idea to overcome problems such as tissue rejection and suppression of the immune system, as well as other serious problems that all other procedures produce. It seems, therefore, that this idea is also more appropriate than the appeal to use a heart taken from a large animal (for example, a pig or a monkey) - since such a procedure could create the phenomenon of the transgenic spread of diseases from animals to humans.
In the process of taking cells from human tissues - as similar as possible to the cell structure of the organ that will be grown in the laboratory - natural chemicals will also be used. These will "instruct" the cells when and how to divide and how to reshape into the final target organ, which will then be transplanted.
Prof. Wee Williams said that since a human phase is "all pump and muscle", it would be easy to grow one in the laboratory. Liver and kidneys, on the other hand, will be more difficult because they are complex organs. The tissue engineering research is carried out in collaboration with scientists in the USA, Canada and Japan.
