When raise a building , construction workers first create a scaffold , a rough framework that mimic the structure of the completed project . As it turn out , biological engine driver do the same matter when they uprise engineering that will enable citizenry to mend their own damage hearts . This workweek in Nature Materials , Lisa E. Freed and George C. Engelmayr , Jr. of Harvard - MIT Health Sciences and Technology trace the “ accordion - like honeycomb ” they ’ve design that can fight the effects of heart attacks or congenital essence shortcoming — and they present an eery video of the pulsing , beating tissues in action . Using laser microfabrication techniques , Freed and Engelmayr created a scaffold out of an pliant polymer called poly(glycerol sebacate ) ( PGS ) . Though there have been premature attempts to reconstruct heart tissue paper in this manner , their young feeler has three central reward that make it the best wager so far for broken hearts . First , they can check the stiffness of the PGS body structure to match the mechanical belongings of genuine heart tissue . In summation , by charge up the tissue with electrical fields , they can advance the ontogenesis of the scaffold in any direction they want . Plus , Freed and Engelmayr incur that their PGS structure conformed course to the desired alignment of sizeable cardiac prison cell — “ the scaffold itself has an intrinsic ability to steer the orientation of cultured heart cellular phone , ” says Freed . And as an append bonus , their grow social organization look really ridiculously cool : Mending break hearts with tissue engineering[MIT]Accordion - like honeycombs for tissue paper applied science of cardiac anisotropy[Nature Materials ] Image by G.C. Engelmayr , Jr. of MIT . TV courtesy of Macmillan Publishers Ltd. : Nature Materials , come along on-line publication , 15 January 2025 ( doi : 10.1038 / nmat2316 ) .
HarvardMedicinetissue engineering
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