Northeastern-led research reprograms skin cells to create human-compatible pig heart valve
Research led by a professor at Northeastern University, a member of the New England Council, has resulted in the reprogramming of human skin cells into heart valve cells that can successfully be used to transplant a pig heart valve into a rodent.
The new procedure, which neither utilizes a virus as a vector nor reprograms the skin cells first into pluripotent stem cells, may offer a new method for successfully transplanting human organs.
“This idea in theory can be applied to other tissue replacement organs because it is possible to induce specific tissue/organ cell types and seed them on decellularized animal (such as a pig) tissues/organ and thus engineer a functional tissue/organ” says Ning Wang, professor of bioengineering at Northeastern University.
Wang provided the original idea and guidance for the research, while the lab work was done by two labs led by Junwei Chen at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.
Read more via Northeastern Global News.