
Scientists use adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue - prostoalex
http://www.popsci.com/scientists-grow-transplantable-hearts-with-stem-cells
======
stubish
The article goes on to contradict its own headline. They are repairing hearts
unfit for transplant using skin cells. They have not grown a full-sized heart.

~~~
andrewflnr
Your objection is that they're not also growing the matrix from scratch?
Personally, I don't find that to be an interesting distinction. All I care
about is that we're getting closer to viable custom replacement organs. I
expect the same is true of the people who did the work and those who wrote the
headline.

~~~
ChuckMcM
And to add to this, if you can take a cadaver heart, strip it to the
scaffolding, and then using a plurpotent stem cell line from your own cells to
convert that structure into a functional heart, which can then be transplanted
into you without risk of rejection, well that would be pretty much a game
changer for all those people dying from congestive heart failure.

Tissue engineering has come a long way. The possibility of building a
replacement organ this way is pretty interesting to contemplate in terms of
changing peoples lives.

~~~
Roritharr
On a Nova Science Now episode they were also talking about using animal organs
for their scaffolding.

There is lots of developments like this that looked pretty amazing, 5 years go
when i first saw it, why isn't there an easy way to keep track of things like
this?

~~~
Luisvel
You can use Google alerts and follow the topic.

------
pawn
Two months ago, my dad died of a heart attack. One thing I've been wondering,
and I'm hoping one of you can tell me, is why they couldn't have put him on
some sort of machine until a replacement was found. This seems like as good a
place as any to ask.

They said he was still alive when he got to the hospital, just barely, but the
heart had too much damage to recover. My suspicions have been that either he
died before he got there, and they didn't want to tell us that, or that they
chose not to save him for some reason relating to insurance not being good
enough. Neither is a rosey picture.

~~~
sosuke
I'm sorry for your loss. My dad had one recently, a real slap in the face to
change his habits, and he recovered well enough to keep speaking and remaining
cane mobile. Gosh now that I think about it that was last September.

I've thought about the same thing though. I think it has to do with brain
damage, broken ribs from CPR and other related issues to keep someone alive.

When I saw this pulseless heart a few years back I imagined we'd be seeing
them more and more to the point of, as you alluded too, being able to hook
someone up to a "heart."

[http://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/137029208/heart-with-no-
beat-o...](http://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/137029208/heart-with-no-beat-offers-
hope-of-new-lease-on-life)

I can't give you any opinion on the "why" though.

------
melling
Third repost within 3 days. HN does seem to have a herding mentality with
upvotes.

There's an abstract
[http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/118/1/56](http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/118/1/56)
from this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11315967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11315967)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312325)

~~~
nickspacek
I check HN multiple times per day every day, and I hadn't seen it yet.

~~~
OJFord
Likewise. I think (just from experience; can't back it up at all) that
interesting but 'non-core' posts - as in not directly CS-related or startup-y
- tend to fall off quicker. But then, because they are interesting, garner a
good number of upvotes again on subsequent reposts even just days later.

------
DannoHung
Wonder if they could use human stem cells on a matrix from a pig heart or
something.

~~~
jack9
You don't want to do that. Pig hearts are notoriously less durable (soft
tissue tends to fail quickly, like in a fraction of a decade), so there's not
a lot of data on the longevity of the circulatory stability of porcine hearts.
I wouldn't ever get a porcine or cadaverous tissue transplant - as someone who
pays close attention and has been living with an artificial valve for decades.
(Human-) Cadaverous scaffolding, sounds ok on the surface. Let's see how much
of it and specifically what parts are left intact after the growth process.

~~~
DannoHung
Yeah, but if organ replacement becomes something we can routinely do to extend
lifespans, then eventually you run out of cadavers.

That's probably a bit far-flung in terms of thinking though.

------
Mithaldu
Read that as "full-sized human beards", was a little confused.

~~~
dogma1138
Well considering that beard transplants are a real thing[0,1] I'm pretty sure
that they are working on that too....

[0][https://www.birchbox.com/guide/article/10-things-you-
should-...](https://www.birchbox.com/guide/article/10-things-you-should-know-
if-youre-considering-a-beard-transplant)

[1][http://www.theprivateclinic.co.uk/treatments/hair-
transplant...](http://www.theprivateclinic.co.uk/treatments/hair-
transplant/beard-hair-transplant)

/Hipster level 9000.

