Researchers create artificial heart muscles in a lab that beat like the real thing

Researchers in Germany have engineered a tiny stretch of artificial heart muscle that can save 33 million people currently suffering from irregularities in heart rhythm. These not only work the same way, express the same genes and resemble heart tissue in every way, they also beat like real heart tissue, as shown in a remarkable video recorded of the muscle. The artificial heart muscle was grown using human induced pluripotent stem cells, which can be modified to become any cell in the body. Artificial cells made from stem cells normally grow flat like a sheet when grown in a lab, but researchers tweaked them to grow in 3D space. Nevertheless, improvements can still be made to reach even higher similarity with the human atrial tissue.” Their next steps, researchers said, were to artificially induce arrhythmias in these artificial cells and study how electrical impulses and potentially effective drugs can help cure the arrythmias.