Researchers have turned stem cells from amniotic fluid into cells that form blood vessels—a step toward patches to repair infants’ hearts.
“We want to come up with technology to replace defective tissue with beating heart tissue made from stem cells sloughed off by the infant into the amniotic fluid,” says Rice University bioengineer Jeffrey Jacot, who led the study.
Jacot says the cells they tested grow very fast. Although construction of a functional patch is some years away, his lab is making progress.
“We’ve done calculations to show that, with what we get from amniocentesis, we could more than grow an entire heart by birth. That would be really tough, but it gives us confidence that we will be able to quickly grow patches of tissue outside of the body that can then be sewn inside.”
