Your heart on a chip?
Berend van Meer |
TEDxUniversiteitVanAmsterdam
• October 2018
Understanding the human body is difficult. Especially if we don’t want to understand just any body, but specifically yours. What happens when you get sick? Why do you respond well to a certain drug or therapy while your neighbour does not? We are used to studying the human body using animal models, but they are even more different than you compared to your neighbour. If we want to study you, we have to recreate an accurate model of you. That is why researchers are now recreating mini versions of human organs in the lab. Berend van Meer works in a group that tries to recreate the heart and they grow it on a chip to measure how the heart is contracting. Not just any heart, but your heart.