Bioengineering a living heart to reduce follow-up surgeries

Many children with complex congenital heart defects (CHDs) need several surgical interventions throughout their lives. Implanted tissue and devices break down over time and need to be replaced. That cycle of surgeries can affect a child’s overall health.

Boston Children’s hopes to break the cycle with a transformational innovation: living, bioengineered heart tissue and components for targeted treatments, and ultimately a whole heart.

Known as THUMPIN’ (Tissue-engineered Hearts Using Multimodal Printing In Newborns), the initiative draws from regenerative medicine, bioprinting, stem cell science, and computational modeling. Our THUMPIN’ team of world-class scientists and clinicians intend to bioengineer, in segments, the tissues and components of heart valves, ventricles, vascular grafts, myocardial patches, and conduction system constructs. Those segments can be implanted in individual repair and replacement procedures, but the goal is to piece them all together to create a living heart for children in need of transplant. 

Many children have several operations and catheterization procedures to repair or replace aging bioprosthetic and mechanical components that improved their health after a CHD diagnosis. With technology and clinical and scientific expertise already making big strides in advancing heart treatment, now is an ideal time to create a whole heart and components that would grow along with a child, improve cardiovascular function more than traditional replacement components can, not require blood thinners, and reduce follow-up procedures.

THUMPIN’ is a vast initiative that combines the expertise and foresight of scientists and clinicians from Boston Children’s, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and NTT Research. They are experts in cardiac surgery, tissue engineering, cardiac development and regeneration, electrophysiology, conduction cells, the vascular network, hypoimmune engineering, heart valves, cardiovascular modeling and simulation, and many other disciplines. The project is supported by a five year, $29.6 million contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

Learn more about the THUMPIN’ initiative