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Health

Heart chambers 3D printed from live human cells can beat for months

A new technique enables 3D printing of miniature heart chambers called ventricles that can beat on their own, and may one day help create whole hearts for transplantation

By Alice Klein

23 June 2023

A 3D-printed ventricle containing beating heart cells

Tilman Esser, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Miniature-sized heart chambers called ventricles have been 3D printed with live human heart muscle cells and shown to beat on their own for at least three months.

Artificial heart tissue can be made by growing heart cells in moulds or on scaffolds, but this typically only allows the construction of simple shapes like sheets or rings.

3D printing may allow the creation of more complex structures. In 2019, for example, Nadav Noor at Tel Aviv University in Israel and his colleagues showed they could

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