Professor Enzo Porrello, Theme Director of Stem Cell Medicine at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), spoke on Wednesday about the stem cell research he and his colleagues have been doing to try to determine the origins of congenital cardiac disease.
“We’re one of the top three child health institutes in the world and our stem cell research is really renowned for being able to generate a number of different human cell types and tissues from stem cells,” Porrello stated. “During the past ten years, in my own research at MCRI.
The creation of miniature human heart tissues that can be grown in a lab and are miniature beating heart tissues has been the main focus of my own research at MCRI for the past ten years.
These little human heart tissues can now be grown from any person,” he continued. We can grow these tissues from children who have heart illness using this technology, which makes it extremely powerful. We can then utilize those models to learn more about the causes of heart disease and create possible remedies.
“Such a blessing” describes the life-altering eye surgery a boy facing blindness receives.
According to Porrello, he hopes to identify the underlying genetic reasons of heart disease in a patient or family through his research.
