A Pacemaker Made From Your Own Cells

FiReaNGeL writes to tell us that researchers at the Children's Hospital in Boston are on the road to crafting a pacemaker from living cells instead of an artificial implant. From the article: "When the engineered tissue was implanted into rats, between the right atrium and right ventricle, the implanted cells integrated with the surrounding heart tissue and electrically coupled to neighboring heart cells. Optical mapping of the heart showed that in nearly a third of the hearts, the engineered tissue had established an electrical conduction pathway, which disappeared when the implants were destroyed. The implants remained functional through the animals' lifespan (about 3 years)."

Re:Lots of advantages

[I_Love_Pocky!]

While I agree that this is promising technology, it seems as though it could only replace a traditional pacemaker in the case of AV node block (which is only one of the many heart problems that traditional pacemaker devices can treat).

Essentially this technology would create an artificial bridge from the atrium to the ventricle, replacing the AV node. The AV node creates a delay between the signal propagation in the atrium to the ventricle which causes them to beat separately (the lub-lub sound you hear from your heart is atrium contracting, followed by ventricle). If this artificial replacement was not able to delay the signal properly it could lead to erratic heart rhythms (like the ventricle pumping at the same time as the atrium, which would severely diminish heart output).

I wish the scientists and doctors working on this project the best of luck. Hopefully if they can grow conductive tissue, they could also use it to repair dead tissue found in hearts that have suffered from a heart attack.

Re:this is just the beginning

[geoffspear]

20 years ago, you would have said that the Winter Olympics couldn't occur in 2006. You think your prediction for the dates of sporting events on 2 centuries will be more accurate?