Mini heart​

Cardiomyopathies affect the efficiency of the heart to pump blood to the body and may eventually lead to heart failure. Engineered cardiac chambers are emerging models that aim to replicate the pump function of the heart in vitro. In AST, we developed a beating ‘mini-heart’ to recreate and understand the effects of pressure and volume overload in cardiac output.

Mini heart

Engineered pumping cardiac chambers are a promising technology to study the effects of hemodynamic loads in cardiac performance, in healthy and diseased conditions.

Using a sacrificial moulding approach, we developed a miniature human cardiac chamber that recapitulates the pumping function of the heart.

In this project, we aim to perform a functional and biomechanical characterization of the pumping chambers under static and dynamic load conditioning.  This will provide the basis for accurate disease models using clinically-relevant pressure-volume readouts.

Researchers

PhD candidate

Guest researcher

Professor