"These Beating Mini-Hearts Could Save Big Bucks, And Maybe Lives" - Megan Molteni
The idea of using tiny, artificial organs to test drugs isn’t new. But getting the biology to actually work is a recent development. Novoheart’s Hong Kong headquarters houses a dozen pea-shaped, pulsating blobs. They’re 3D human heart ogranoids – a simplified shrunken-down version of the real thing – the first ever to contain a hollow chamber, like one of the four that’s beating inside the human chest. And they’re the future of drug testing. When Kevin Costa, PhD, associate professor of medicine, cardiology, director of cardiovascular cell and tissue engineering at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-founder of Novoheart, first started working on mini-hearts, scientists could only grow cells in single layer on a dish. Dr. Costa says the 3-D tissues are still more like baby hearts than adult hearts, but they respond more realistically than the strip-shaped version.
- Kevin Costa, PhD, Associate Professor, Medicine, Cardiology, Director, Cardiovascular Cell and Tissue Engineering, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai