How does the human heart develop? And how can researchers better predict the effects of new treatments for cardiovascular disease? These are some of the questions being addressed within HeartEngine, a pioneering HealthTech Nexus project.
The project uses human stem cells to create cardiac tissue that mimics key stages of heart development, providing researchers with a powerful new tool to study the heart and its diseases.
“Using microcapsules, we create an environment that supports controlled and uniform stem cell growth. This allows us to mimic processes that closely resemble the development of a real human heart,” says Robert Passier, Professor of Applied Stem Cell Technologies at the University of Twente.
HeartEngine combines expertise from a wide range of disciplines, including developmental biology, tissue engineering, computational modelling and stem cell research. This integrated approach enables scientists to investigate how genes and cells work together to build functional cardiac tissue.
“We use human stem cells to generate cardiac tissue and study which genes are active during development,” explains Gert Jan Veenstra, Professor of Molecular Developmental Biology at the Radboud Institute for Molecular Sciences, a close partner of Radboudumc. "This helps us understand how cells organise themselves and how genetic mechanisms drive the formation of the heart.”
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