Technion scientists Dr. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Lior Gepstein have successfully used embryonic stem cells to create blood vessels within the tissue, which should enable its incorporation into the heart's vascular system.
The researchers created the heart tissue through differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into heart muscle and endothelial cells. They then grew the two together with fibroblasts, embryonic supporting cells.
The advance, according to the Circulation Research Journal that wrote up the study, could eventually enable the repair of heart tissue caused by heart disease and heart attacks. Tissue irreversibly dies during a heart attack when blood is cut off to a section of the heart.
"Without this system, acceptance could be prolonged and the cells could die during this time period," Levenberg told Israel21c. "In our work, we demonstrated the importance of the endothelial cells (cells that build blood vessels), which encourage differentiation of the heart cells and their organization, in addition to their multiplication. That is - it is important to create heart cell tissue, with all its component cells, in this case the endothelial cells, heart cells and cells that support the blood vessels."
The growth of the cells took place on a special porous and biodegradable scaffold designed by the Technion researchers.
The next step is examining whether such tissue, implanted in the heart, would gain acceptance and be incorporated by the heart into the larger vascular system.
Dr. Levenberg is optimistic. She believes that the development will one day lead to a cure to degenerative diseases. Scientific American Journal named her one of the world’s 50 leading scientists in 2006 for her work.
Another development, discovered by scientists at the Weizmann Institute, may facilitate the revival of dead brain cells caused by head trauma, stroke or disease.
The new method gets rid of excess glutamate, which floods damaged areas of the brain, leading to the death of larger areas after a trauma. Glutamate carries impulses from one nerve cell to another. When brain cells are damaged, it spills out and overexcites the cells it touches, killing them as well.
Weizmann Institute Prof. Vivian Teichberg, Prof. Yoram Shapira of the Soroka Medical Center and Dr. Alexander Zlotnik of Ben Gurion University of the Negev have developed a possible solution that may bypass many of the delivery problems with the drugs available for the purpose.
They discovered that a certain enzyme injected into the blood of rats acted to contain and absorb the glutamate as it spilled into the brain, preventing most of the damage. The method will next be tested in clinical trials to examine whether it could have a similar effect on a human brain.