This GIF (slightly sped up) shows the honeycomb mesh of cells being compressed by contracting heart cells growing along the scaffold (Image: Boyang Zhang).
Engineers at the University of Toronto just made assembling functional heart tissue as easy as fastening your shoes. The team has created a biocompatible scaffold that allows sheets of beating heart cells to snap together just like Velcro™. “One of the main advantages is the ease of use,” says Professor Milica Radisic (ChemE, IBBME). “We can build larger tissue structures immediately before they are needed, and disassemble them just as easily. I don’t know of any other technique that gives this ability.”
Growing heart muscle cells in the lab is nothing new...
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