Inexhaustible source of human heart muscle cells allows significant decrease in animal testing

They use laboratory animals for that research.

“This has all kinds of disadvantages,” said De Vries. “The use of laboratory animals is socially charged, the care is expensive and the heart muscle cells of animals behave differently from human heart muscle cells in many ways.”

The researchers would therefore prefer to use human heart muscle cells, but because these cells hardly multiply in the body, let alone in a laboratory, they simply cannot get enough heart muscle cells for their research.

A video from the LUMC explaining the discovery:

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