November 2016

A team of researchers from the Hamburg/Kiel/Lübeck site have succeeded in transplanting human heart tissue grown in the laboratory onto guinea pigs’ injured hearts. The tissue was accepted and the animals’ cardiac output increased by up to 30 percent. Beforehand, the researchers had grown strips of tissue from pluripotent human stem cells and then sewn the strips, like patches, onto the injured areas of the guinea pigs’ hearts. In contrast to cell suspensions, which other groups are currently experimenting with, this method has the advantage that fewer cells are required and fewer cells are washed out. The scientists also carried out control experiments with other tissue strips, this time using endothelial cells. They wanted to exclude the possibility that stabilizing the heart muscle with tissue of any type would lead to improved heart function. But that was not the case: the cardiac output of those animals did not improve.

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