Beating 'Heart On A Chip' Developed By Canadian Scientists! (Would Be Able To Replace Transplants From Humans; Therefore Lower The Risk Of Rejection)

Canadian scientists have developed a way to grow swatches of living heart tissue — containing muscle and "blood vessels" — that beat rhythmically like a real heart.

University of Toronto Prof. Milica Radisic and her team hope to use the technology to grow various kinds of "mini organs" that function the way tissues do inside the human body. That would allow them to be used for drug testing or even for growing replacement tissues to treat people who have suffered a heart attack, for example. Scientists have previously grown individual tissues in petri dishes in order to test whether different chemical compounds could potentially function as drugs.

But very few compounds that work in those conditions actually develop into marketable drugs, said Christopher Moraes, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at McGill University in Montreal. "We think this is because all of our discoveries are made in artificial conditions."
Posted By PSmooth