Organ replacement from the laboratory? Researchers from Göttingen and Hanover (Lower Saxony) are at the forefront nationwide.
- Innovation competition "Organ replacement from the laboratory" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
- Project of the Hannover Medical School ( Lower Saxony ) in first place
- Project of the University Clinic Göttingen ( Lower Saxony ) in second place
Göttingen / Hanover -The Medical School Hannover (MHH) and the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) ( Niedersachsen ) are the winners in the nationwide innovation competition "organ laboratory replacements" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Lower Saxony: Organs from the laboratory project of the Hannover Medical School
The “3D-Heart-2B” project of the MHH in Hanover (Lower Saxony) took first place and received federal funding of 3 million euros for three years. The “IndiHEART” project of the UMG Göttingen came in second place and has been supported with two million euros over three years
For Lower Saxony's Minister of Science Björn Thümler congratulated and was pleased with the result: "The fact that the first two places go to research institutes in Lower Saxony testifies to the high level of excellence in the research carried out here." The shortage of donor organs is a major social problem, says Thümler.
Lower Saxony: organs from the laboratory - project of the University Clinic Göttingen
Scientists and physicians in Göttingen (Lower Saxony) are working on “heart patches” made of cells - in the project “IndiHEART: Individualized heart muscles for the functional treatment of heart failure”, scientists from UMG, the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPSDS) in Göttingen, are forming , the German Primate Center (DPZ), Leibniz Institute for Primate Research Göttingen and Leibniz Uni-Hannover.
Organ replacement in the laboratory: University Clinic # Göttingen and Hannover Medical School at the forefront nationwide https://t.co/lNZKoWaiSk #hna
- HNA Göttingen (@HNA_Goettingen) June 1, 2020You develop under the direction of Prof. Dr. Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann, Director of the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology at the UMG, a process for the automated production of human heart muscle tissue from stem cells for the precise application in patients with heart muscle weakness.
Lower Saxony: Organs from the laboratory - implementation of the heart patch concept
Prof. Wolfram Zimmermann, project manager "organ replacement from the laboratory" of the UMG Göttingen (Lower Saxony).
© UMG / nh
"We expect that the implementation of our IndiHEART concept will enable a second generation of heart patches for wide use in patients with cardiac muscle weakness ," says project manager Prof. Dr. Wolfram Hubertus Zimmermann from Lower Saxony.
A clinical trial is planned after completion of the project. If the IndiHEART project from Göttingen is successfully implemented, customized heart patches for patients from 2024 onwards will be tested in a follow-up study.
In the MHH research project "3D-Heart-2B", scientists from the MHH Clinic for Heart, Thorax, Transplantation and Vascular Surgery (HTTG) and the Leibniz Research Laboratories for Biotechnology and Artificial Organs (LEBAO) want to develop a biological heart support system.
Lower Saxony: Organs from the laboratory - production of cardiac muscle cells
With the help of stem cells (iPS cells) from genetically reprogrammed human tissue cells, cardiac muscle cells can be produced. These should form the basic building block for a tubular heart prosthesis, according to the researchers from Lower Saxony .
As a single-chamber heart implant, organ replacement could help patients with congenital heart defects who are inherently lacking a heart chamber. In these patients, only one ventricle supplies both the body and pulmonary artery. The biological heart prosthesis made from fibrin, heart muscle cells and heart valves is intended to compensate for a reduced pumping capacity of the heart.
By Thomas Kopietz
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The cardiology department at the University Clinic of Göttingen (Lower Saxony) * recently received a new X-ray system.
A research building * of national importance is also to be built on the site of the University Medical Center (UMG) in Lower Saxony: the "Heart and Brain Center".
* hna.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network