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In a study published in Circulation Research, researchers at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine have developed a lab-grown human model that can capture how immune cells respond to heart injury in a dish – a major breakthrough in studying cardiac disease and repair.
Immune cells play a key role in cardiac injury and repair, shaping patient outcomes following heart attacks and other cardiac conditions. However, there are currently no human experimental models that can emulate those interactions in a dish. Unlike other organs, the human heart doesn’t regenerate, so patient biopsies can’t be used to provide relevant tissue to study. While immune cells can be taken from donor blood and added to engineered cardiac models, this approach is artificial, variable and difficult to scale. This has been a major roadblock in developing therapies and investigating the mechanisms that underpin cardiac injury and repair.
In this new study, researchers created a multi-organoid system by linking together human bone marrow and heart organoids – miniature, lab-grown versions of human organs derived from induced pluripotent stem cells.
The organoids were connected using a 3D-printed device, which allowed cells and fluid to move between them. When the heart organoid was subjected to injury, immune cells from the bone marrow organoid were recruited into the damaged tissue – mimicking, for the first time in a dish, the complex immune response to heart injury.
Read the full story on the Radcliffe Department of Medicine website.