Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. To discover new treatments and therapies we must first improve the models in which we learn from. Here, we are pushing the boundaries of current cardiac models, infusing a blood vessel organoid with a chambered cardioid to generate physiologically accurate vasculature through our mature cardiac model. Allowing us to utilise this new model in closer representative disease modelling in the future.
Impact
The research will be used to investigate the response to a heart attack, and more so, how accurately we can model that in the lab. The adult heart does not regenerate following a heart attack, so we must discover new treatments or therapies that can help it heal. The only way this is efficient, is with mature, human, and physiologically relevant models that can be generated easily in the lab, such as this model.
reNEW research
What you are seeing here is the very early, initial collaboration between two postdocs in separate groups, vasculature and cardiac. The work will then be encompassed into my recent grants to develop a mature and novel disease model of a heart attack, and discover new regenerative compounds.
Image description
A blood vessel organoid (left) undergoes fusion into a cardioid (right). The cardioid is rich with cardiomyocytes (cyan) and fibroblasts (orange), while blood cells (red) are seen throughout, encompassing the cardioid.
Credits
Ben Johnson, Postdoc, Richard Davis Group, reNEW Leiden. Marc Vila Cuenca, Postdoc, Valeria Orlova Group, reNEW Leiden.
