Stepping Towards Replacement Hearts
(From EurekAlert!). Scientists are rapidly working their way up the tissue engineering ladder, from small and simple to large and complex. Replacement organs for the old or damaged are in our future, and a good thing too. "It looks, contracts and responds almost like natural heart muscle - even though it was grown in the lab. And it brings scientists another step closer to the goal of creating replacement parts for damaged human hearts, or eventually growing an entirely new heart from just a spoonful of loose heart cells. ... researchers are reporting significant progress in growing bioengineered heart muscle, or BEHM, with organized cells, capable of generating pulsating forces and reacting to stimulation more like real muscle than ever before. The three-dimensional tissue was grown using an innovative technique that is faster than others that have been tried in recent years, but still yields tissue with significantly better properties."
Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-12/uomh-ana120706.php