ONEIDA >> There is an abundance of groundbreaking research going on at the Cardiac Research Institute, or Masonic Medical Research Laboratory in Utica. Myron Thurston III, the assistant director of development and communications at the institute, will host the next Community Media Lab to share some of the experimental cardiology projects and research with the public, as well as educate them on heart health.

The Community Media Lab will take place Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. at the Oneida Daily Dispatch office, 130 Broad St. in Oneida. It is free and open to the public.

Thurston will explain what were doing in the area of cardiac arrhythmias and irregular heartbeats. An arrhythmia is an abnormal heart rhythm caused by electrical instability within the heart.

Some of the most significant work done at the lab is with stem cell research and bio-engineering. Scientists at the lab are working on using skin cells to create genetically-matching heart cells that can ideally be used for regenerative therapy for failing hearts.

Thurston says the idea is that if the scientists can create a heart or organ made from the persons cells the body wouldnt reject it.

The lab is also pioneering efforts in cloning a human heart. In the beginning of 2013, scientists at the institute began to look into replicating a heart in their revolutionary bioreactor, or bio-engineering chamber, which provides a space for the growth and maturity of cloned organs. They have been testing with rabbit hearts, and hope to scale up from there.

The process begins with removing all of the genetic material from the heart, leaving a shell of the muscle, commonly called a ghost heart because it has a white appearance after decellularization. The goal is to put pluripotent stem cells, or stem cells capable of separating into one of many cell types, into the ghost heart to generate a cloned heart from the patients own cells. Scientist are in the process of putting cells back into the heart, and Thurston says so far its working.

This gets rid of the need for donor hearts, said Thurston. Donor hearts have to be harvested within minutes to be viable for a transplant, he said, which is less time than it takes to harvest most other organs.

Thurston says the next step is for scientists to test pig hearts, which are identical to human hearts once all the genetic material is removed.

While the lab has made several scientific accomplishments including producing revolutionary drugs and treatments for cardiac arrhythmias, it boasts the discovery and naming of the M cell as its most significant breakthrough in heart research. Through the finding of the M cell, researchers were able to determine that the heart was a heterogeneous organ, meaning differences exist in the organs function and drug interaction. The cells were found to be the main reason for many types of arrhythmias, leading to the development of new strategies to fight the irregular heartbeats by targeting the M cells. Continued...

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Media Lab to focus on heart research