Advances in stem cell research offer hope for treatments that could help patients regrow heart muscle tissue after heart attacks, a key to achieving more complete recovery.
Scientists today report success in creating functional blood vessels in vitro for hearts of rats that had sustained a heart attack. The journal Nature Communications published the paper, whose lead authors are Ying Zheng and Charles Murry of the UW Medicine Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicinein Seattle.
“To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that building organized blood vessels with perfusion outside the body leads to improved integration with host blood vessels and better tissue blood flow,” said Zheng, a University of Washington associate professor of bioengineering.
The scientists set out to show that by growing stem cell-derived heart tissue in a petri dish, with attention to blood vessels’ construction, they could improve the tissue’s incorporation with existing heart vessels.
