Heart disease claims millions of lives every year. In Malaysia, heart attack cases are increasing due to weight, diet and the stress of daily life. For those facing heart failure, the only way to ensure their lives are not threatened is to wait for organs to be donated.
But this is not something that happens easily due to a lack of suitable donors and organs. Dr. Doris Taylor of Texas Medical Center is aware of this fact and has developed technology to produce a “ghost heart” that uses human stem cells and the skeleton of a pig heart.
The name ghost heart is given because when an organ is produced in the laboratory, it is white like a ghost. Dr. Taylor used part of a pig’s heart combined with human stem cells to produce a replacement heart. Because recipient stem cells are used to produce replacement hearts, the probability of postoperative rejection will be reduced.
The process of producing each heart is complicated and time consuming. Stem cells need to be taught to form parts of the heart. Injection of cells into the correct area is performed in a sterile bioreactor with the help of a robot nicknamed BioAssemblyBot (BAB).
This technology has been developed over the past 10 years and researchers now believe it is almost ready for use on human recipients. In addition to producing a replacement heart, Dr. Taylor has hopes in the future it can also be used to produce other organs such as the kidneys, liver and lungs.
Xenotransplant surgery involving a pig’s heart into a human recipient ended in death two months ago due to an animal virus. The solution to the problem of organ deficiency has yet to be found but now there are more and more efforts from the change community being done simultaneously