Biological heart chamber from the laboratory

Concentrated research expertise for a biological heart prosthesis: Mrs. Birgit Hilke Andrée and Mr. Nils Benecke Copyright: Karin Kaiser/MHH - BMBF funds MHH project on heart support system with three million euros Status: 21. July 2021 More than 9,000 people in Germany are on the waiting list for a donor organ, about 700 of them are waiting for a heart. Donor organs are in short supply, artificially produced replacement organs are still dreams of the future. But medicine is getting closer to this goal - also at the MHH. In the research project "3D-Heart-2B", scientists from the Clinic for Cardiac, Thoracic, Transplantation and Vascular Surgery (HTTG) and the Leibniz Research Laboratories for Biotechnology and Artificial Organs (LEBAO) want to develop a biological heart support system. So-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from genetically reprogrammed human tissue cells are used to produce heart muscle cells and blood vessel-lining endothelial cells. These are to form the basic building block for a tubular heart prosthesis.