Scientists have made significant progress in recent years in growing human heart tissue in the lab. In 2022, a team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School successfully grew a beating human heart in the laboratory using stem cells. The heart was only about the size of a mouse heart, but it had all the same features as a real human heart.
This breakthrough is a major step towards the goal of growing full-sized human hearts in the lab. If scientists can successfully do this, it could revolutionize the way we treat heart disease. Instead of relying on donor hearts, which are in short supply, patients could have their own custom-grown hearts.
Of course, there are still many challenges to overcome before we can grow human hearts in the lab. The hearts need to be larger and more functional, and they need to be able to survive outside the body. But the progress that has been made so far is very encouraging.
