Heart Cells on Lab Chip Display ‘Nanosense’ That Guides Behavior
Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers, working with colleagues in
Korea, have produced a laboratory chip with nanoscopic grooves
and ridges capable of growing cardiac tissue that more closely
resembles natural heart muscle. Surprisingly, heart cells
cultured in this way used a “nanosense” to collect instructions
for growth and function solely from the physical patterns on the
nanotextured chip and did not require any special chemical cues
to steer the tissue development in distinct ways. The scientists
say this tool could be used to design new therapies or
diagnostic tests for cardiac disease. The device and experiments
using it were described online in the Early Edition of
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work, a
collaboration with Seoul National University, represents an
important advance for researchers who grow cells in the lab to
learn more about cardiac disorders and possible remedies. “Heart
muscle cells grown on the smoo