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sl8

(13,584 posts)
Fri Feb 11, 2022, 07:30 AM Feb 2022

Biohybrid fish made from human cardiac cells swims like the heart beats

https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2022/02/biohybrid-fish-made-human-cardiac-cells-swims-heart-beats


Biohybrid fish made from human cardiac cells swims like the heart beats

Device offers insights into artificial muscular pumps, a step toward building an artificial heart

By Leah Burrows | Press contact
February 10, 2022

Harvard University researchers, in collaboration with colleagues from Emory University, have developed the first fully autonomous biohybrid fish from human stem-cell derived cardiac muscle cells. The artificial fish swims by recreating the muscle contractions of a pumping heart, bringing researchers one step closer to developing a more complex artificial muscular pump and providing a platform to study heart disease like arrhythmia.

“Our ultimate goal is to build an artificial heart to replace a malformed heart in a child,” said Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the paper. "Most of the work in building heart tissue or hearts, including some work we have done, is focused on replicating the anatomical features or replicating the simple beating of the heart in the engineered tissues. But here, we are drawing design inspiration from the biophysics of the heart, which is harder to do. Now, rather than using heart imaging as a blueprint, we are identifying the key biophysical principles that make the heart work, using them as design criteria, and replicating them in a system, a living, swimming fish, where it is much easier to see if we are successful.”

The research is published in Science.

The biohybrid fish developed by the team builds off previous research from Parker’s Disease Biophysics Group. In 2012, the lab used cardiac muscle cells from rats to build a jellyfish-like biohybrid pump and in 2016 the researchers developed a swimming, artificial stingray also from rat heart muscle cells.

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Biohybrid fish made from human cardiac cells swims like the heart beats (Original Post) sl8 Feb 2022 OP
That is freaky cool and scarily reminiscent of The Borg. nt Phoenix61 Feb 2022 #1
Since it has a human heartbeat, Republicans will want to call it a baby. Chainfire Feb 2022 #2
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