Molecular ‘Velcro’ helps make beating 3D human heart model

The promise of engineered human organs has been held out for some years. The idea is that rather than relying on an otherwise healthy donor, failing livers, kidneys, hearts and lungs could be built to order in a lab and implanted into a patient. The reality, however, has proved more difficult as human organs are complex structures with many working parts.

A potential breakthrough has come from York University in Toronto, Canada, where Prof Mohammed Yousaf has led a team that has, for the first time, joined together three types of cell found in the heart that contract in unison to make tissue that beats like a living heart. Moreover, the team achieved this feat without using a scaffolding structure to support the tissue as it forms.

Yousaf has developed a substance called "ViaGlue", based on liposomes that have the ability to self-assemble, which can be attached to living cells and link them together, almost like Velcro.