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News
Researchers create a new heart in the lab - Work opens a new path to replacement of hearts and other organs
In a medical first, University researchers have created a beating heart in the laboratory. Using detergents, they stripped away the cells from rat hearts until only the nonliving matrix was left; they then repopulated the matrix with fresh heart cells.
If perfected, the technique may be used someday to generate new hearts for patients. In the United States alone, about 5 million people live with heart failure, 550,000 new cases are diagnosed every year, and 50,000 die waiting for a donor heart. The work is published online in the January 13 issue of Nature Medicine.
"The results were a home run," says Doris Taylor, director of the University's Center for Cardiovascular Repair and a principal investigator on the study. "We knew that cell therapy--that is, transplanting cells into the heart--is not a panacea. So we started thinking, 'Is there a way to use cells to engineer heart tissue?'"
The idea, she says, is to create whole new blood vessels or organs by implanting a patient's own cells into a matrix derived from a donor organ. This approach ought to bypass the problem of organ rejection because the matrix, being devoid of cells, shouldn't provoke an immune response. Even if it did, the new cells would lay down a fresh matrix of their own, which would turn off the immune response and free patients from the need to take immunosuppressive drugs.
The process, called whole organ recellularization, can be done "with virtually any organ," Taylor says.
Someday, doctors may routinely extract cells from heart failure patients and use them to reseed a new organ from a cadaver-derived ECM. What types of cells those would be isn't known yet.
"It depends on what cells are best," says Taylor. "Bone marrow-derived stem cells are already used to treat hearts. It may be a mix of cells from bone marrow, hearts, and skeletal muscle. We'll use whatever cells we think are going to give us the best shot."
Surgeons already patch holes in the heart, or areas damaged by heart attacks, with pieces of heart muscle. Patches can be grown in the lab, but it's hard to get them anywhere near thick enough because of difficulties keeping the tissue oxygenated. The ECM technique, however, has good potential for overcoming this limitation because it uses the original circulatory system to oxygenate the growing hearts.
"The thickness of the ECM is key," Taylor explains. "If the matrix is there, we can recellularize its whole thickness."
While the ECM technique can supply heart patches, she says its main application is likely to be in patients who need a whole new heart. With too few donor hearts available, the ECM heart may fill the gap and help patients rid themselves of mechanical assist devices much earlier.
The potential is great, but "commercialization is not our goal," says Taylor. "It's getting this to patients safely and effectively.
"I'd like to think that these kinds of innovations will continue to happen at the U because the state realizes that we can change the world of medicine here in Minnesota."
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Leonid Hurwicz, University Regents Professor Emeritus of Economics, joined Eric Maskin of Princeton University and Roger Myerson of the University of Chicago, as winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics. Professor Hurwicz was honored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for laying the foundations of a theory that has led to "major breakthroughs in many areas of economics, including regulation theory, corporate finance, the theory of taxation and voting procedures." His theories revolutionized the way people think about how to bring about desired economic change, sweeping away old ways of thinking that relied on central planning without regard to incentives for individuals. According to University of Minnesota Professor V. V. Chari, "That was a fundamental breakthrough in thinking about economics policy and economic reform…. He explained in mathematical, but common sense terms when we should expect markets to function well and when we should expect them to function poorly." Professor Hurwicz’s work had a major impact on the way people think about development problems in very poor countries, and indirectly affected a wide range of economic policies.
At age 90, Professor Hurwicz is the oldest Nobel laureate in history. He has received many honors before, most notably the National Medal of Science in 1990. He was named a Regents Professor, the highest faculty honor of the University of Minnesota, in 1969. He continues a University legacy of Nobel laureates in Economics, as he was the graduate adviser to Daniel McFadden, who won the economics Nobel in 2000. In addition, past University of Minnesota faculty members Edward Prescott and George Stigler were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
The department's national standing owes a huge debt to Professor Hurwicz, according to Narayana Kocherlakota, chair of the Department of Economics. “Leo's research and teaching have been at the center of life in the Department of Economics for nearly 60 years. We are delighted to offer our congratulations to our longtime colleague and friend for this recognition of his extraordinary and foundational research."
For more information and to read some of the international acclaim:
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Professor Lawrence Rudnick, along with graduate student Shea Brown and associate professor Liliya Williams, recently announced an historic discovery that has captured attention around the world. They have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious, unseen "dark matter." This hole, or void, is 1000 times bigger than typical voids. The hole is so vast that it would take light 1 billion years to cross, traveling more than 6 billion trillion miles.
Learn more about this scientific breakthrough.
Meet Professor Rudnick and read an interview.
See radio imagery of the discovery.
Listen to Professor Rudnick explain the significance of this discovery.
The University's new $6 million Plant Pathology Containment Facility is the only public facility of its kind in the Midwest, and one of four in the United States. The facility, which opened in early November, 2007, will permit researchers to study crop-crippling pathogens and search for ways to manage the diseases they cause. The facility was built with funding from the State of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and the USDA Forest Service.
Learn more here...
View a video here...
R. Justin Stewart, a graduate student in the M.F. A. program in Art, received an award for Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Center on October 6. He is one of the 21 recipients selected from a pool of 339 college students from five countries. His winning sculpture, a 15 feet-by-8 feet creation called "Connected", will be shown in the Grounds For Sculpture Fall/Winter Exhibition (October 6, 2007, through April 27, 2008) in New Jersey, and is featured in Sculpture magazine. Learn more about Mr. Stewart and his sculpture.
Past 2007 News
The University of Minnesota Libraries is displaying one of the most valuable items in its collection as part of the exhibit, "The Map that Named America, 1507-2007". The exhibit includes a 500-year-old map that was the first to use the word America.
The University opened a new Education Sciences Building on October 5, 2007. The building is the former home of the Mineral Resources Research Center, but has been renovated inside and its exterior has been restored to its 1924 appearance. Interior spaces have been remodeled to provide specialized laboratory and meeting space and modern offices for the department of Educational Psychology, the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) and the Center for Early Educational Development (CEED), which are all part of the College of Education and Human Development. All three programs pursue research in reading and literacy, special education, accountability and assessment and early childhood education. "Increased interaction between departments will enable more comprehensive, broadly based studies," said Kyla Wahlstrom, director of CAREI.
Infill floors were added to provide enough space to accommodate the programs, and the mechanical, electrical, circulation and infrastructure were entirely replaced. The main feature of the interior is the third-floor atrium, which features a high-rising skylight. From the atrium, much of the new interior is visible.
A new courtyard was added that overlooks the Mississippi River and the pedestrian bridge. The Education Sciences Building is the only building at the university that is located on the riverside of East River Road. The project was a finalist for "Redevelopment/Extensive Renovation" in The Business Journal's Best in Real Estate awards this winter.
Infill floors were added to provide enough space to accommodate the programs, and the mechanical, electrical, circulation and infrastructure were entirely replaced. The main feature of the interior is the third-floor atrium, which features a high-rising skylight. From the atrium, much of the new interior is visible.
A new courtyard was added that overlooks the Mississippi River and the pedestrian bridge. The Education Sciences Building is the only building at the university that is located on the riverside of East River Road. The project was a finalist for "Redevelopment/Extensive Renovation" in The Business Journal's Best in Real Estate awards this winter.
The University of Minnesota will join other participating universities, including Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, and the University of Michigan, in a collective agreement to scan and make searchable public domain and in-copyright volumes in a way that is consistent with copyright law. The University of Minnesota plans to provide up to one million volumes from our University Libraries collections to the digitization effort. Digitization facilitates unprecedented access to these collections. With the ability to search text within volumes, research not previously possible will be enabled. Public domain works will be displayed fully; a search of in-copyright titles will result in a small amount of text with mechanisms to purchase or secure a copy within a library.
The Consortium on Fostering Interdisciplinary Inquiry is being led by the University of Minnesota, which will host a conference in fall, 2008. Other members of the consortium are Brown University, Duke University, the Universities of California/Berkeley, Illinois/Urbana-Champaign, Michigan, North Carolina/Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin. The consortium will exchange information about opportunities and challenges in interdisciplinary inquiry, and will develop strategies for improving the climate for interdisciplinary activity at institutions of higher education. An article about the University's leadership role in the consortium is in Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/07/25/interdis.
Four universities, including the University of Minnesota, recently created the Broadband Optical Research, Education and Sciences Network (BOREAS-Net). The network features two links to Internet2. The participating universities believe the network will give their researchers an edge in competing for both top faculty members and research grants. The high-speed optical network allows researchers at the University and the other founding universities (Universities of Iowa and Wisconsin, and Iowa State University) to share data and computational resources among researchers worldwide and to collaborate on research activities with other institutions. The network's innovative use of fiber optic cable allows BOREAS-Net members to control their own bandwidth and maintain a greater degree of flexibility in supporting research and educational services. Among the many benefits of the partnership, the dedicated high-speed connectivity will allow campus researchers to:
* Access databases at other institutions
* Aggregate data from sources around the country
* Allow institutions to share management of databases
* Access supercomputing centers
*Control and transfer data from specialized instruments, such as large telescopes, at national laboratories and other institutions.
The University of Minnesota, represented by seven students, was recently named a co-winner of Google's Build Your Campus in 3D competition. Winners were chosen by a six-member panel of industry experts who stated, “Last week we had the opportunity to watch college campus environments come alive with Sketchbook and Google Earth. We couldn't help but be impressed with the effort put forth...” To see the University of Minnesota campus in 3D, click here.
University of Minnesota graduate Norman Borlaug became one of only five people in history to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, Nobel Peace Prize, and Presidential Medal of Freedom, when he was awarded the Gold Medal on July 17, 2007. Dr. Borlaug joins Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Elie Wiesel in receiving these three honors. Dr. Borlaug, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees at the University of Minnesota, is known as “the father of the Green Revolution” for his work in reducing world hunger. “Norman Borlaug’s work in developing high-yield, disease-resistant grains improved the lives of billions of people,” said Allen Levine, dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. The Congressional Gold Medal was presented to Dr. Borlaug by President Bush and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The Gold Medal is Congress’ highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions. Past recipients include a wide range of people and institutions such as George Washington, Hubert Humphrey, and the American Red Cross. Borlaug Hall, on the St. Paul campus, is named after Dr. Borlaug, who is 93 years old.
The Corporation for National and Community Service announced on July 9, 2007, that the Twin Cities metropolitan area has the highest rate of volunteerism in the United States. The study ranked the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country. More than 40 percent of Twin Cities residents 16 years of age or older volunteered from 2004 to 2006, while the national average was 28%. The Corporation for National and Community Service named high education levels, which increase civic involvement, and a high concentration of nonprofit organizations, as two reasons the Twin Cities area leads the nation. Read the full report.
Four faculty from nearly 2,800 applicants were named Guggenheim fellows by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. This is the highest number of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to University faculty since 1982. The faculty are Daphne Berdahl, Department of Anthropology; Hisham Bizri, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; David Treuer, Department of English; and Peter McMurry, Department of Mechanical Engineering. The fellowships are awarded on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.
On April 23 the University honored five faculty with the Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education Award. They are Maria Damon, Department of English; John Day, Institute of Human Genetics; Ruth Lindquist, School of Nursing; Thomas Molitor, Department of Veterinary Populations Medicine; and Bruce Wollenberg, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. More information about this award and the current and past honorees can be found at http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/awards/aoce/.
Regents Professor Ronald Phillips is co-winner of the 2007 Wolf Prize in Agriculture, one of the world's highest honors in Agriculture. Dr. Phillips is a member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics. The Wolf Foundation was established by the late German-born inventor, diplomat, and philanthropist Dr. Ricardo Wolf. Wolf Prizes are awarded in five separate categories in recognition of “outstanding scientists and artists...for achievements in the interest of humankind and friendly relations among people.” Since 1978 a total of 232 scientists and artists from twenty-two countries have received the award.
Frommer's www.frommers.com named Minneapolis one of its “Top Travel Destinations for 2007”.
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