Tech Digest

IT plays role in creation of lab heart

TWO DEPARTMENTS WITHIN THE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY played a role in the creation of a beating heart in the aboratory by scientists in the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair. The research recently gained international media attention.

Biomedical engineering assistant professor Theoden Netoff and postdoctoral fellow Lauren Black both contributed to the research led by Doris Taylor, Ph.D., director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair. Netoff analyzed data that measured the movement of the beating heart. Black was involved directly with the team that created the heart by conducting experiments on the mechanical properties of native and decellularized tissue, as well as experiments related to the contraction force of the heart. His data appears in the research report that was published in the January issue of Nature Medicine.

The rat heart is shown in its three stages of decellularization through a process developed by University professor Doris Taylor and her team.

To create the heart, scientists used a process called decellularization to remove all of the cells from a dead rat heart, leaving only the extracellular matrix or the framework between the cells, intact. New cells from young rat hearts were injected into the framework and stimulated electrically. Within two weeks, the cells formed a new beating heart that conducted electrical impulses and pumped a small amount of blood.

In a related project, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Machine Shop had been working with Dr. Taylor’s lab on using decellularized material to create vessels for vascular grafting.

“Medical researchers asked us to build something that would help them provide an even coating of new cell mixture to the decellularized material in a sustained environment,”
said Dave Hultman, managing research engineer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “It was necessary to create something that rotated so the cells wouldn’t pool on the bottom.”

The rotating bioreactor chamber, which was designed by the Electrical and Computer Engineering department’s machine shop, provides an environment where new cells can adhere to decellularized tissue and grow. The chamber rotates to prevent cells from building up on the bottom.

A rotating bioreactor chamber was designed where the new cells could adhere to the matrix and grow. A rat aorta, approximately two millimeters in diameter and six millimeters in length, looking similar to a piece of porous pasta, was used in the chamber. New cell mixtures
were injected into the matrix—one type for the inside of the aorta and a tougher, more elastic mixture for the outside. The aorta then rotated in the chamber where cells could feed and grow.

Researchers hope that the decellularization process could be used to make new donor organs. Because a new heart could be filled with the recipient’s cells, researchers hypothesize it’s much less likely to be rejected by the body. And once placed in the recipient, in theory the heart would be nourished, regulated, and regenerated similar to the heart that it replaced.