Japanese Scientists transplant artificial human heart cells for the first time
It is a less invasive method than a complete heart transplant to treat patients with heart disorders
Faisal Khan
Faisal Khan
Feb 6, 2020·3 min read
Replacing diseased human organs is becoming more commonplace with the ongoing breakthroughs in medical technology. As are we becoming better equipped to treat various deadly diseases. Heart ailments & Cancer are two of the biggest killers for mankind right now. On the bright side, though, most of some very promising research is being conducted in these areas to find cures.
As I have reported recently, Scientists have created various artificial entities to revolutionize the medical field — artificial neurons mimicking our brain cells, Copper oxide nanoparticles to treat cancer, 3D-printing functional “Mini-Livers” and the most recent addition to the list is the transplantation of artificial human heart cells. This is the second achievement for Japanese researchers after developing artificial blood, earlier in 2019.
Although full heart transplant has been carried out successfully ever since the surgeons at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center transplanted the heart of 4-year-old John Nathan Ford of Harlem into 4-year-old JP, this recent innovation can open up new avenues in regenerative medicine. The clinical trial enabled the researchers to address the issue at the micro-level rather than opting for an entire heart transplant.
“I hope that (the transplant) will become a medical technology that will save as many people as possible, as I’ve seen many lives that I couldn’t save,”
~ Researcher Yoshiki Sawa
The technique involved placing biodegradable sheets of 100 million heart muscle cells, the sheet itself is 4 to 5 centimeters wide and 0.1 millimeters thick. Artificial heart cells were created by harnessing the power of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — a Nobel Prize-winning technology developed at Kyoto University in 2006. The iPS cells are truly revolutionary as they can be programmed to become any kind of cells, which in this case was the heart muscle cells.
Professor Yoshiki Sawa at Osaka University in Japan, who has been working on this technique tested it on pigs, which showed an improvement in organ functions of the animal, which led Japan’s health ministry to conditionally approve a research study involving human subjects. And now the first human transplantation has proved to be a huge milestone for researchers.
The first patient who received the landmark treatment earlier last month is now recovering and being monitored. The transplanted biodegradable sheets with healthy heart muscle cells are expected to encourage the formation of healthy vessels and boost cardiac function.
A total of 10 patients including this one will undergo this procedure over the next three years. These will be people who are suffering from ischemic cardiomyopathy — a condition in which a person’s heart’s muscles have weakened to the point that it has trouble pumping because its muscles don’t receive enough blood.
Medium
