Source: University of Michigan Health System
Date: June 19, 2012
Summary:
A cutting-edge method developed at the University of Michigan Center for Arrhythmia Research successfully uses stem cells to create heart cells capable of mimicking the heart's crucial squeezing action. The cells displayed activity similar to most people's resting heart rate. At 60 beats per minute, the rhythmic electrical impulse transmission of the engineered cells in the U-M study is 10 times faster than in most other reported stem cell studies.
An image of the electrically stimulated cardiac cells is displayed on the cover of the current issue of Circulation Research, a publication of the American Heart Association. For those suffering from common, but deadly heart diseases, stem cell biology represents a new medical frontier. The U-M team of researchers is using stem cells in hopes of helping the 2.5 million people with an arrhythmia, an irregularity in the heart's electrical impulses that can impair the heart's ability to pump blood.
Their objective included developing a bioengineering approach, using stem cells generated from skin biopsies, which can be used to create large numbers of cardiac muscle cells that can transmit uniform electrical impulses and function as a unit. Furthermore, the team designed a fluorescent imaging platform using light emitting diode (LED) illumination to measure the electrical activity of the cells.
