Many people are in need of a new heart, however there is a long waiting list for heart transplantations because not enough hearts are available to be transplanted and the new heart has to also match the DNA of the receiver. In the USA 3200 people are on the waiting list for a heart transplant and only around 2200 donor hearts are available each year. And even after you have gotten transplanted a new heart, you are still in risk of rejecting the new heart, which would mean you would have to got through a second operation and you would have to take immunosuppressant drugs and that might lead to other illnesses. However soon there might be a solution to all of these problems.
In America a new type of treatment is being researched. This treatment involves decellulariziting hearts and injecting them with the patient’s stem cells in order for a new heart with the donors DNA to be made. In order for this to happen the scientists take a pig heart, soak it in a chemical, which is common detergents, and wash all the cells of the heart away until they are left with a protein scaffold which is like the house framing to the heart. Then the researchers inject the, so called ghost heat, with thousands of blood and bone marrow stem cells, which were before taken from the patient, who is meant to receive this new heart. Then they place the heart in a bioreactor with artificial lungs and tubes that pumps blood and oxygen into it and then they wait until the ghost heart matures into a new beaten heart that then can be transplanted. The picture on the right shows a ghost heart. The white outer layer is the protein scaffold.
Doris Taylor, who is the director of regenerative medicine research at the Texas heart institute, has been working on this. She was able to create rat and pig hearts like this hand in 2011 also was able to create human hearts
This new treatment will have many advantages. These new transplanted hearts won’t be rejected anymore as they will be custom-made using the recipients stem cells and so those patients wouldn’t have to take immunosuppressant and won’t have to go through the side effects of it. Also would the patients not have to go through dozens of heart biopsies and they wouldn’t have to worry about the pain, time and expense of a second transplant. Most importantly would every patient who needs a heart get one because with this treatment, might it be possible to use pig hearts and then change them into functioning human hearts.
This treatment would help many people and might even be used for other organs. At the moment Scientists are working on developing a method to recreate the arteries and vessels within the organ. If the scientists find a way to do that, this treatment will be able to be used to transplant hearts and maybe even to create other organs.
In America a new type of treatment is being researched. This treatment involves decellulariziting hearts and injecting them with the patient’s stem cells in order for a new heart with the donors DNA to be made. In order for this to happen the scientists take a pig heart, soak it in a chemical, which is common detergents, and wash all the cells of the heart away until they are left with a protein scaffold which is like the house framing to the heart. Then the researchers inject the, so called ghost heat, with thousands of blood and bone marrow stem cells, which were before taken from the patient, who is meant to receive this new heart. Then they place the heart in a bioreactor with artificial lungs and tubes that pumps blood and oxygen into it and then they wait until the ghost heart matures into a new beaten heart that then can be transplanted. The picture on the right shows a ghost heart. The white outer layer is the protein scaffold.
Doris Taylor, who is the director of regenerative medicine research at the Texas heart institute, has been working on this. She was able to create rat and pig hearts like this hand in 2011 also was able to create human hearts
This new treatment will have many advantages. These new transplanted hearts won’t be rejected anymore as they will be custom-made using the recipients stem cells and so those patients wouldn’t have to take immunosuppressant and won’t have to go through the side effects of it. Also would the patients not have to go through dozens of heart biopsies and they wouldn’t have to worry about the pain, time and expense of a second transplant. Most importantly would every patient who needs a heart get one because with this treatment, might it be possible to use pig hearts and then change them into functioning human hearts.
This treatment would help many people and might even be used for other organs. At the moment Scientists are working on developing a method to recreate the arteries and vessels within the organ. If the scientists find a way to do that, this treatment will be able to be used to transplant hearts and maybe even to create other organs.