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February 11, 2022 10:00 am

Scientists Build Synthetic Fish That Swim Using Lab-Grown Human Heart Cells

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Scientists have built a school of robotic fish powered by human heart cells. The fish, which swim on their own, show how lab-grown heart tissue can be designed to maintain a rhythmic beat indefinitely, a team reports in the journal Science. "It's a training exercise," says Kit Parker, a professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Harvard. "Ultimately, I want to build a heart for a sick kid." The tiny biohybrids, based on zebrafish, are built from paper, plastic, gelatin and two strips of living heart muscle cells. One strip runs along the left side of the robot's body, the other along the right. When the muscle cells on one side contract, the tail moves in that direction, propelling the fish through the water. The movement also causes the strip of muscle cells on the opposite side to stretch. This stretching, in turn, produces a signal that causes the cells to contract, which perpetuates the swimming motion. "Once that cycle starts, these things just start motoring," Parker says. The fish are equipped with a special cluster of cells that initiate the cycle of stretching and contracting, Parker says. [...] The fish kept swimming for more than three months, sustained by nutrients added to the fluid around them. Showing that it's possible to produce human heart tissue that beats on its own is important because the body can't replace heart cells lost to disease or inflammation. "Once you're born, about two days after you leave the womb, the number of cardiac muscle cells you have then is all you're going to have for the rest of your life," Parker says. [...] Heart cells stay healthy by constantly rebuilding themselves, a process that takes about 20 days, he says. Because the fish swam for more than 100 days, he says, "each cell has rebuilt itself in there about five times." The muscle cells also became stronger with exercise the way cells in a human heart do. This suggests the cells could eventually be used to repair a failing heart.

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