Minneapolis Star Tribune
January 13, 2008 - 12:05 PM CST
Summary:
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports researchers at the University of Minnesota have successfully grown a beating rat heart from adult heart stem cells:
"Researchers at the University of Minnesota have grown a beating heart in a jar. They used detergents to strip a rat heart of its own cells, leaving behind a white, three-dimensional scaffolding of connective tissue. They then infused it with living cardiac cells from newborn rats, which multiplied and grew into a fully functional heart -- a first in the field of tissue engineering." The researchers believe the first human application of this finding might be to treat heart defects in infants.
