CONCERTINAS may be more commonly associated with 19th-century reed music than modern heart surgery, but it turns out their shape is ideal as a scaffold on which to grow cardiac tissue.
Tissue scaffolds are already used to aid the growth of cartilage tissue in the lab. Heart tissue is more difficult to grow in this way, however. In order for the heart to beat properly, the new cells must be aligned in the same direction as existing muscle fibres. Previous attempts to build cardiac tissue scaffolds have failed as they allowed the cells to grow haphazardly.
Now a team from…
