SCIENTISTS have told how they were left "speechless" when they brought a dead heart back to life.
They stripped the organ of its cells and added stem cells before it started pumping again more than a week later.
They hope it will help overcome the problem of organ transplant rejection.
Harald C. Ott, of Massachusetts General Hospital, said: "When we saw the first contractions, we were speechless.
"We just took nature's building blocks to build a new organ."
His team took a dead rat's heart and stripped it of all its cells, leaving only the essential structure of chambers, valves and the blood vessels.
They added stem cells from baby rats and placed the organ in a laboratory.
Four days later, it began contracting. And eight days later, it started pumping, a report in the journal NatureMedicine said.
The experiment could open a new field of heart repair.
Surgeons could take a donated dead organ, renew it with the patient's own cells and then patch it on to a damaged heart.
It would overcome the dangers of rejection because the body will not reject its own cells.
However, the new bio-heart beat at just two per cent of the efficiency of a normal heart and needed 75million cells - or 100 rat hearts' worth to work.
Despite this, it was hailed by British scientists yesterday.
Dr Tim Chico, of Sheffield University, said: "This is an ingenious step towards solving a massive problem."
2% efficiency isn't really much. This could still be one of those dead end things.
Stem cell research has so much potential, a shame it's often blocked by old religions nonsense. Granted trying to bring back the dead will have its consequences I'm sure, but using them to replace organs instead of waiting years in pain and suffering for a transplant that could fail is a pretty dam good idea.
Better rats than us. Scientist that actually work with the rats actually do develop some attachment to them after awhile. Who knows, maybe in a few years, aliens will come and turn us into lab rats. Woo!
.curve wrote:Unless Silkroad has a hole I can stick it in, I prefer spending money on the girlfriend.
Goseki wrote: Better rats than us. Scientist that actually work with the rats actually do develop some attachment to them after awhile. Who knows, maybe in a few years, aliens will come and turn us into lab rats. Woo!
What about those already "Abducted". They have already made us their lab rats =]
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