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

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• 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