#heart cells

[mindblowingscience]

Heart tissues beat half as strongly on the ISS as they do on Earth

Heart cells "really don't fare well in space," scientists have found.

What effects does spaceflight have on an astronaut's heart? This is exactly the question that prompted scientists from Johns Hopkins University to send 48 bioengineered heart tissue samples to the International Space Station, where they were monitored for 30 days and compared to identical samples on Earth. The team examined how low gravity impacts things like the cells' strength of contraction, known as twitch forces, and any irregular beating patterns. 

Continue Reading.

[bpod-bpod]

Growing Heart

Growing up in a supportive environment is at the heart of healthy, happy development. This is true for our hearts as well, and scientists engineering heart tissue from stem cells (starter cells with limitless development potential) for use in research and healthcare are trying to create that perfect environment. Engineered heart tissue is often limited because the cells don’t fully mature, restricting their use. A new 3D printing technique using an electric field to precisely deposit materials and create complex structures has produced an ideal microenvironment to support maturation, like a loving home or enriching school. Heart tissue grew along the structure (pictured, with fibrous actin in red and a heart cell protein in green) and showed mature cell behaviours. Scaffolds like this could help create new tissue to repair damage rather than relying on scarce donor hearts, and also provide material for tests of new potential treatments.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Guangming Zhang and colleagues

Shandong Engineering Research Center for Additive Manufacturing, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao, China

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Advanced Science, February 2023

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[pastelmicrobes]

Cellular movement within a beating heart

[tea-earl-grey-thot]

All of the TOS senior staff share two brain cells and 95% of the time uhura has both of them but occasionally Scotty gets to use 1 for a little bit

Jim has all the heart cells though ❤️

[neurosciencenews]

Researchers Operate Lab Grown Heart Cells By Remote Control

Researchers noted that cells in the lab grow better on graphene than other materials, and behave more like cells do in the body.

The research is in Science Advances. (full open access)

[webofgoodnews]

Scientists grow heart cells in spinach leaves that beat

[bpod-bpod]

Outta This World

Stem cells hold much hope for medicine as they can become a range of different cell types. Researchers in labs across the globe are studying the biology of these specialised cells and testing ways to turn them into cardiac cells to treat heart conditions, for example. All this hype, but one major obstacle stopping such therapies becoming more commonplace is efficiently producing large batches of cells to use. One potential solution to this is travelling 250 miles above us on the International Space Station. This unique lab allows astronauts to perform experiments in microgravity and these near-zero gravity conditions may hold the secret to rapid mass production of stem cells for regenerative medicine. Astronauts are also working on projects to engineer stem cell-derived products like cardiac tissue (pictured) and model diseases which could form a futuristic roadmap of biomanufacturing to bring us new ways to live healthier lives.

Written by Sophie Arthur

Image from work by Arun Sharma and colleagues

Collaborative - including Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, LA, CA; Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, Inc, Melbourne, FL; McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA,USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Stem Cell Reports, December 2021

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[intelligentliving]

Cancer Research Has Led To A Heart Regeneration Discovery

Researchers from the University of Cambridge‘s Department of Pharmacology have inadvertently discovered a gene that triggers heart cell regeneration, which could one day lead to a way to heal damaged hearts. This will have major implications for treatments of heart disease explains Dr. Catherine Wilson who led the team’s research...