Cardioids -- heartbeat, heartbreak and recovery in a dish
2021-05-20
(Press-News.org) Self-organizing heart organoids developed at IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences - are also effective injury- and in vitro congenital disease models. These "cardioids" may revolutionize research into cardiovascular disorders and malformations of the heart. The results are published in the journal Cell.
About 18 million people die each year from cardiovascular diseases, making them the leading cause of fatalities globally. Moreover, the most prevalent birth defects in children pertain to the heart. Currently, a major bottleneck in understanding human heart malformations and developing regenerative therapies are missing human physiological models of the heart.
The research group of Sasha Mendjan established cardioids at IMBA - human self-organizing cardiac organoids that recapitulate the lineage architecture of a heart chamber. Mendjan explains: "Cardioids are a major milestone. Our guiding principle is that for an in vitro tissue to be fully physiological, it also needs to undergo organogenesis. We were able to achieve this, using the developmental principles of self-organization - which makes it such an exciting discovery".
During development, a heart chamber emerges from the mesoderm germ layer. The researchers thus established in vivo-like mesodermal signaling conditions guiding pluripotent stem cells. "Amazingly, this led to self-organization of a heart chamber-like structure that was beating. For the first time, we could observe something like this in a dish. It is a simple, robust and scalable model, and does not require addition of exogenous extracellular matrix like many other organoid models," explains Sasha Mendjan. Besides a beating myocardial layer, a functional heart also contains an inner endothelial lining that later contributes to heart vasculature, and an outer epicardial layer that directs heart growth and regeneration. Cardioids recapitulate this three layered structure, shaping a heart chamber-like structure.
The scientists determined how signaling and transcription factors control cardioid chamber formation. For instance, the team was able to phenocopy the dramatic chamber cavity loss observed in children with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome in cardioids by disrupting a transcription factor linked to this defect. The researchers also assessed the effects of cryoinjury (injury by freezing), a technique mimicking myocardial infarction, on cardioids. For the first time in a dish, the team found that this injury triggers an in vivo-like accumulation of extracellular matrix proteins in cardioids, an early hallmark of both regeneration and fibrotic heart disease.
The self-organizing organoid field has revolutionized biomedical research over the past decade. However, the heart was the last major inner organ missing such a physiological model capable of recapitulating developmental and injury response processes. "Cardioids bear incredible potential to unravel human congenital heart defects. As the system is physiological and scalable, this opens up huge possibilities for drug discovery and regenerative medicine," says Sasha Mendjan.
INFORMATION:
This technology developed at IMBA has led to the creation of HeartBeat.bio, a new IMBA spin-off focused on the development of a high-throughput 3D screening platform for heart failure and cardiomyopathies. To the HeartBeat.bio website: https://heartbeat.bio/ .
Original publication:
Hofbauer P, Jahnel SM, Papai N, et al., "Cardioids reveal self-organizing principles of human cardiogenesis", Cell, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.04.034
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00537-7
About IMBA
IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology - is one of the leading biomedical research institutes in Europe focusing on cutting-edge stem cell technologies, functional genomics, and RNA biology. IMBA is located at the Vienna BioCenter, the vibrant cluster of universities, research institutes and biotech companies in Austria. IMBA is a subsidiary of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the leading national sponsor of non-university academic research. The stem cell and organoid research at IMBA is being funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and the City of Vienna.
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-05-20
NEW YORK, NY (May 20, 2021)--The immune nature of kidney cancer stands out when compared to other cancers: More immune cells infiltrate kidney cancers than most other solid tumors, and kidney cancer is one of the most responsive malignancies to today's immunotherapy regimens.
But despite treatment, many patients with clear cell renal carcinoma--the most common type of kidney cancer--eventually relapse and develop incurable metastatic disease.
A new study shows that the presence of a rare and previously unknown type of immune cell in kidney tumors can predict which patients are likely to have cancer recur after surgery. These cells could even ...
2021-05-20
We observe water vapor condensing into liquid droplets on a daily basis, be it as dew drops on leaves or as droplets on the lid of a cooking pot. Since the work of Dutch physicist J.D. van der Waals in the 19th century, condensation has been understood to result from attractive forces between the molecules of a fluid.
Now, an international team of researchers has discovered a new mechanism of condensation: Even if they don't attract each other, self-propelled particles can condense by turning toward dense regions, where they accumulate. The study was published in Nature Physics.
"It's like if cars steered toward crowded areas and made the crowd even bigger," explained Steve Granick, director of the IBS Center for Soft and Living ...
2021-05-20
Antiretroviral therapy, the common approach in the treatment of HIV, halts replication of the virus and has saved the lives of millions of people. However, for patients the drug cocktail becomes a lifetime necessity because they continue to harbor latent HIV in a small number of immune system cells. In the absence of treatment, HIV can again replicate and rebound into full blown AIDs.
A new study, however, suggests that addition of a single small molecule can rip away the cloak that shields those cells containing HIV and make them susceptible the patient's own antibodies that otherwise are not normally of much use against HIV.
For the study, a team of researchers ...
2021-05-20
HOUSTON - Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have developed a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence (AI)-based tool that can accurately identify rare groups of biologically important cells from single-cell datasets, which often contain gene or protein expression data from thousands of cells. The research was published today in Nature Computational Science.
This computational tool, called SCMER (Single-Cell Manifold presERving feature selection), can help researchers sort through the noise of complex datasets to study cells that would likely not be identifiable otherwise.
SCMER may be used broadly for many applications in oncology and beyond, explained senior author Ken Chen, Ph.D., associate professor of Bioinformatics ...
2021-05-20
A national study from researchers at Michigan Medicine found that nearly 3% of insured U.S. adults under 65 take medications that weaken their immune systems.
The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, are based on data from over 3 million patients with private insurance. They focus on patients' use of immunosuppressive drugs, including chemotherapy medications and steroids such as prednisone.
The analysis reveals nearly 90,000 people met the study criteria for drug-induced immunosuppression that may elevate risk for severe COVID-19 symptoms and hospitalization ...
2021-05-20
Young children who practice visual working memory and reasoning tasks improve their math skills more than children who focus on spatial rotation exercises, according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings support the notion that training spatial cognition can enhance academic performance and that when it comes to math, the type of training matters. The study is published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
"In this large, randomized study we found that when it comes to enhancing mathematical learning in young children, the type of cognitive training performed plays a significant role," says corresponding author Torkel Klingberg, professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. "It is an important finding because it provides ...
2021-05-20
A particular type of dendritic cell is responsible for the tissue damage that occurs in non-alcoholic steatohepatits (NASH) in mice and humans. The dendritic cells cause aggressive, proinflammatory behavior in T cells, as now discovered by researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in collaboration with colleagues from Israeli research institutes. Blocking these dendritic cells alleviates symptoms in mice. This type of approach might also prevent the development of serious liver damage in NASH patients.
Obesity is extremely widespread in the Western world, and 90 percent of those affected show signs of fatty degeneration of the liver. If they maintain an unhealthy lifestyle ...
2021-05-20
Solar geoengineering -- putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce global warming -- is not a fix-all for climate change but it could be one of several tools to manage climate risks. A growing body of research has explored the ability of solar geoengineering to reduce physical climate changes. But much less is known about how solar geoengineering could affect the ecosystem and, particularly, agriculture.
Now, research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) finds that solar geoengineering may be surprisingly effective in alleviating some of the worst impacts of ...
2021-05-20
CHAPEL HILL, NC - American politics can be stressful and confrontational, which can lead to anger. The combination of intense stress and negative emotions can trigger potentially fatal cardiovascular events in people who are susceptible to these health issues. But the direct link between a stressful political election and an increase in cardiac events hadn't been established, until now. A new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association is the first to show that exposure to a stressful political election is strongly associated with an increase in potentially life-threatening cardiac events.
"This retrospective ...
2021-05-20
A team led by a social work researcher at The University of Toledo has published the first empirical evidence that emotional support animals can provide quantifiable benefits to individuals with serious mental illness who are experiencing depression, anxiety and loneliness.
The research brings credence to the many anecdotal reports of emotional support animals having positive impacts on chronic mental health issues.
"This is the first peer-reviewed, published scientific evidence that emotional support animals may benefit people's mental health," said Dr. Janet Hoy-Gerlach, a professor of social work and the lead investigator on the project. "My hope is that our pilot study catalyzes additional research in this area with more rigorous ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Cardioids -- heartbeat, heartbreak and recovery in a dish
