The Conversation by Doris Taylor 8/10/2023
Lab-grown ‘ghost hearts’ work to solve organ transplant shortage by combining a cleaned-out pig heart with a patient’s own stem cells
Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that 17.9 million people lose their lives to it each year, accounting for 32% of global deaths.
Doris Taylor is a scientist working in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Her work has focused on creating personalized functioning human hearts in a lab that could rule out the need for donors. Taylor has dubbed these hearts “ghost hearts.”
In March, Taylor spoke at the 2023 Imagine Solutions Conference in Naples, Florida, about the ghost heart and her journey to creating it. Below are edited answers to questions from The Conversation. Taylor is also featured on Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast.
What are the biggest challenges facing organ donations today?Currently, patients in need of a heart transplant need to join a waitlist, and hearts become available when someone else has died. Because there are not enough hearts to go around, only the very sick are put on the waitlist. The U.S. transplants about 11 hearts a day, and on a given day there are more than 3,000 people waiting for a heart.
Even when organs are successfully transplanted, it isn’t a Hollywood fairy-tale ending. A person receiving an organ transplant essentially trades one disease for other medical complications and diseases. Toxic drugs necessary to prevent rejection can cause high blood pressure diabetes, cancer and kidney failure. These are serious medical issues that also affect people emotionally, financially and physically.
About 18% of people die in the first year after a transplant.
What is the so-called “ghost heart”? How does it work?The ghost heart is a heart whose cells have been removed. All that remains is the heart framework, or scaffolding. It’s called a ghost heart because removing the cells causes the heart to turn from red to white. A human heart wouldn’t work as a scaffold because so few are available to work with.
More:
https://theconversation.com/lab-grown-ghost-hearts-work-to-solve-organ-transplant-shortage-by-combining-a-cleaned-out-pig-heart-with-a-patients-own-stem-cells-203625
