Lab-Grown Heart Tissue Offers Hope for Children’s Heart Disease

Scientists have engineered lab-grown heart tissues that closely imitate adult heart muscle. This breakthrough offers a promising avenue for treating genetic heart diseases in children, potentially revolutionizing how these conditions are addressed and treated.

Mimicking the Adult Heart

Researchers have successfully created miniature, lab-grown heart tissues, known as cardiac organoids, mirroring adult human heart muscle. This innovative work was announced by the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in collaboration with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.

These cardiac organoids are derived from human pluripotent stem cells. The scientists overcame a key limitation as traditionally, stem-cell-derived heart cells remained immature. Researchers activated specific biological pathways, simulating exercise effects, and maturing the cells to function like real adult heart tissue, according to the QIMR Berghofer release.

Drug Testing and Disease Modeling

The study, which appeared in Nature Cardiovascular Research, shows that these advanced cardiac organoids can assess new drugs for heart conditions. According to James Hudson from QIMR Berghofer’s Cardiac Bioengineering Lab, this approach is highly beneficial.

“There’s a huge benefit to studying heart diseases in this way. Using human cardiac organoids allows us to screen many more compounds, speeding up the process of drug development,”

—James Hudson, Cardiac Bioengineering Lab

The use of organoids allowed researchers to model genetic heart diseases, including hard-to-study Desmoplakin cardiomyopathy. They found diseased tissues developed scarring and weakened pumping, mirroring patients’ symptoms. A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that approximately 1 in 100 children in the United States have some form of congenital heart defect (CDC 2024).

Promising Results

Researchers found that an experimental drug class (BET inhibitors) restored function in the affected tissue. Gene and protein analysis, alongside tissue samples from the Melbourne Children’s Heart Tissue Bank, enabled researchers to more precisely model childhood heart conditions. This work is geared towards developing better treatments for vulnerable patients, according to the study.

This advancement suggests new possibilities for pediatric cardiology. The ability to test drugs and model diseases using these organoids provides a crucial step in the treatment of congenital heart conditions.