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Researchers 3D print functioning human heart pump

At the University of Minnesota, researchers have 3D printed a functioning centimeter-scale human heart pump. Scientists believe that this discovery could have some major implications for studying heart disease, one of the leading causes of death in the United-States, killing&hell

Researchers 3D print functioning human heart pump
3Dnatives

At the University of Minnesota, researchers have 3D printed a functioning centimeter-scale human heart pump. Scientists believe that this discovery could have some major implications for studying heart disease, one of the leading causes of death in the United-States, killing about 600,000 people per year. Bioprinting techniques have developed tremendously in recent years, and research teams around the world are studying how such techniques could be used to cure heart conditions. The ultimate goal being to reproduce a human heart that could be transplanted into patients. Even though experts estimate that we will need to wait between 10 to 15 years for this to be possible, breakthroughs such as this one at the University of Minnesota indicate that other solutions exist beyond bioprinting organs.

More precisely, the researchers had tried in the past to 3D print heart muscle cells that were derived from pluripotent human stem cells, in other words cells with the potential to develop into any type of cell in the body. Researchers aimed to reprogram these cells to heart muscle cells and then use specialized 3D printers to print them. The problem was that scientists could never reach critical cell density for the heart muscle cells to actually function.

A team of researchers from Tel-Aviv University (TAU) successfully 3D printed a heart using human cells back in April 2019. Researchers estimate that it will take an additional 10 to 15 years before this solution is viable.

Therefore, researchers at the University of Minnesota flipped the process. Brenda Ogle, lead researcher on the study explains: “With our team’s expertise in stem cell research and 3D printing, we decided to try a new approach. We optimized the specialized ink made from extracellular matrix proteins, combined the ink with human stem cells and used the ink-plus-cells to 3D print the chambered structure. The stem cells were expanded to high cell densities in the structure first, and then we differentiated them to the heart muscle cells.”