A beating heart in a dish, grown from a patient's own blood

Heart failure treatment is a puzzle with a cruel twist: the same drug that helps one patient recover leaves another getting worse. At McGill University in Montreal, researchers have built a way to rehearse the choice — growing beating heart cells in the laboratory from a small blood sample taken from each patient with dilated cardiomyopathy, a serious weakening of the heart muscle where only about half of patients survive five years. In a pilot study published in npj Biomedical Innovations, the lab-grown cells let the team compare how different patients' hearts signal and respond. The group has already grown cells from 40 people, a step toward choosing heart-failure treatment by testing it on the patient's own heart tissue first — without touching the patient's heart.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation