made just for you? Sound like science fiction? Well we’re not so far off.

Hey guys, Julia here for DNews

Dudes, so something pretty cool just happened in the wonderful world of science. Researchers

grew BEATING HEARTS FROM HUMAN STEM CELLS. Okay fine hyperbole, it’s not the whole

heart just a few beating cells. BUT IT’S SO COOL.

In a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers used human skin cells, turned

them into pluripotent cells and used physical and chemical signals to coax the cells into

forming little cardiac microchambers. Which could be important for studying how the heart

grows in an embryo or how drugs might affect a fetus’s heart. Or… looking way into

the future, for growing hearts in a dish. It could be a great way to replace organs.

No more waiting for a donor and since it would be perfect match to your body, no more terrible

drugs to prevent rejection. So far smaller organs like tracheas and bladders

have been grown in a lab using a person’s own stem cells, but a heart is a little more

complicated. So let’s take a little look into how we got here.

First off, what are stem cells? Stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they are undifferentiated

cells that can develop into any kind of cell. Skin, heart, liver etc. So alright, but what’s

the big deal? Why do researchers love to study stem cells? Even from the earliest inklings

of stem cells, there have been big dreams. Researchers have hoped that one day they could

be able to grow entire new organs from stem cells that would be a perfect match for the

recipient.

We’ve come a long way from the early days of stem cell research. Human stem cells were

first isolated in 1998 by two independent research teams led by James A. Thomson of

the University of Wisconsin and another by John D. Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University

School of Medicine. These early stem cell lines were derived from early embryos, which

are destroyed in the process and thus stirred a little controversy. Okay a lot of controversy.

Because of the debate that raged in the US surrounding embryonic stem cell research,

scientists looked to find stem cells in other adult tissues. So a few years later in 2001

adult stem cells were found in fat tissue. Now adult stem cells can be found from almost

any tissue. But they are tricky, they take a while to coax into growing in a dish. So

they’re not ideal.

But in 2007, in a paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Dr. Anthony Alata discovered

that amniotic fluid also contains stem cells. Which of course added more fuel to the debate.

And the same year, two independent teams of researchers pioneered a process to turn adult

somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells, naturally called induced pluripotent stem

cells. The process involves introducing 4 different genes into the cells using a virus

as a carrier.

The team from Japan led Shinya Yamanaka, published their work in the journal Cell and the team

from by James Thomson at University of Wisconsin–Madison published their work in the journal Nature.

And it was such a huge deal that, Yamanaka actually won the 2012 Nobel Prize for discovering

iPS cells.

Which of course this discovery held a lot of promise, it would sidestep some of the

controversy with embryonic stem cells. But there are more than a few issues with their

technique, like low efficiency, it’s difficult to do and when done, only a few cells are

reprogrammed. Plus there’s weird problems with rejection and also a problem with tumors

developing.

But problems aside, tons of studies have been and are being done with this technology. With

lofty goals, like attempting to cure blindness and diabetes. The Federation of American Societies

for Experimental Biology says that IPS cells will also “allow scientists to study complex

human diseases in Petri dishes, a step toward analyzing the conditions and developing therapies.”

Some researchers like Dr. Alata don’t care where the cells come from, just that they

work well. No matter where stem cells come from, it’s clear that we’re on the road

to organs grown in a dish. Well I certainly hope so. But it’s also clear that more research

is needed.

And really, lab grown organs can’t come soon enough! If you wanna know the challenges

of living with an organ transplant & why they fail, check out this recent video

I did: