Heart to heart

AHC - Image - Content - Size C - Taylor team UR photo

Over the last several years, Doris Taylor has searched for ways to repair damaged heart tissue using muscle or stem cells.

When she saw the beating heart, Doris Taylor, Ph.D. could barely believe her eyes.

It was as though everything she worked for in her career had suddenly converged in this single pale organ suspended in a special jar. She had just grown a heart using stem cells.

Taylor doesn't just say, “Trust your crazy ideas.” She lives it.

Attracted to the University of Minnesota in 2003 by its strong programs in stem cell biology, cardiovascular surgery, and cardiology, Taylor established the Center for Cardiovascular Research as a hub for heart-healing work.

Each year hundreds of Americans with failing hearts die while waiting for heart transplants. Those who receive them spend a lifetime fighting organ rejection by taking drugs that suppress the immune system.

Over the last several years, Taylor searched for ways to repair damaged heart tissue using muscle or stem cells.

She and her colleagues looked for ways to build a bioartificial heart from the recipients’ own cells, avoiding the life-or-death issues of donor organ availability and rejection.

In 2008, they took a giant step forward when they stripped a rat heart of its cells, repopulated the scaffold that was left behind with cells from newborn rat hearts, and coaxed the organ to beat on its own.

When the stem cells were added to the scaffold, they responded to cues from the scaffold.

“Does it know where it came from,” Taylor poses, “or does it know what it should be?” The tool may also reveal whether stem cells act differently when introduced to an area where injury, like a heart attack, has occurred.

By altering genes and cell markers, “we can learn what it takes to rebuild functioning tissue,” she says. Next steps in her research: