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Chemical Cocktail Can Keep a Heart Viable 10 Days, Outside the Body
nj_peeps writes "Harvard professor Hemant Thatte has developed a cocktail of 21 chemical compounds that he calls Somah, derived from the Sanskrit for 'ambrosia of rejuvenation.' Using Somah, Thatte and his team have accomplished some amazing feats with pig hearts. They can keep the organ viable for transplant up to 10 days after harvest — far longer than the four-hour limit seen in hospitals today. Not only that, but using low temperatures and Somah, they were able to take a pig heart that was removed post mortem and get it to beat 24 hours later in the lab."
That's Fronken-shteen, you insensitive clod!
Neato. If this could be applied to human hearts, this could significantly open the options organ recipients have to save their lives. Perhaps even expand what kind of medical procedures that could be done on the human heart that may be limited by how long the heart can be kept viable outside the body.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Why would the gender of the heart donors matter?
The question is, why wouldn't it? Do you know? I don't. Are you saying scientists should be less observant, record fewer details, ignore more facts? You might as well ask "Why bother mentioning that they were pig hearts, what would it matter?"
Are you offended at the obvious sexism inherent in the selection of two female pig hearts? Bothered by the fact that reality may not be politically correct?
How does this affect bacon?
Because that's what's really important.
Bacon.
As Stephen King once claimed, "I seem monstrous to some, but I have the heart of a child.
I keep it in a jar, on my desk..."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
"As a benchmark, we should strive towards the ability to reconstruct hot chicks only from part of their arm! ;)"
I'm with you. They have two arms, so you could potentially end up with two hot chicks!
The chicken heart was kept alive, in a laboratory in a vat. Special solution: half blood, half sodium-salycilate.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I would imagine commercial interests? They may want to keep such things hidden from other research teams until they are themselves published or secured patents?
One can also never rule out intentional hype prior to proven facts. Like this liquid i have here with 500 compounds in it, I neglect to mention all the rocks and dirt i just threw into a glass of water.
From the paper it's a modification of something called GALA solution.
Compenent mmol/L g/L
Distilled water, L 1.00
Calcium chloride 1.30 0.191
Potassium chloride 7.00 0.522
Potassium phosphate (monobasic) 0.44 0.060
Magnesium chloride (hexahydrate) 0.50 0.101
Magnesium sulfate (heptahydrate) 0.50 0.123
Sodium chloride 125.00 7.31
Sodium bicarbonate 5.00 0.420
Sodium phosphate (dibasic; heptahydrate) 0.19 0.05
d-Glucose 11.00 1.982
Glutathione (reduced) 1.50 0.461
Ascorbic acid 1.00 0.176
l-Arginine 5.00 1.073
l-Citrulline malate 1.00 0.175
Adenosine 2.00 0.534
Creatine orotate 0.50 0.274
Creatine monohydrate 2.00 0.298
l-Carnosine 10.00 2.26
l-Carnitine 10.00 2.00
Dichloroacetate 0.50 0.075
Insulin 10 mg/mL, mL/L 1.00
pH is adjusted to 7.5 with sodium bicarbonate or Tris-hydroxymethyl aminomethane at desired temperature.
Bunch of salts.
These aren't complex proteinaceous molecules. I am interested in the presence of dichloroacetate because that was the anti-cancer molecule reported
by slashdot just yesterday.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/13/2117203
Now all you hackers planning to preserve human hearts don't you use this formula without citing the good Doctor Thatte.
Please mod me up for my chemical knowhow
Reanimator,
Along with research done by Mark Roth with H2S, this could save lots of people.
If it's liquid, it's drinkable. Now, the consequences of drinking it are another matter...
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
You should have n^2 hot chicks! Just rinse and repeat.
I always told everyone Crank 2 was based on factual events.
Ringer's solution is just Na, Cl, K, Ca in water. Oh, and lactate. So, the only commonality is 4 ions. And not even the same sugar. No, it's nowhere NEAR a tweaked Ringer's solution...
Wow, way to read into my post, dude.
Something most Slashdotters probably know is that science journalism is very derivative. Since a lot of journalists don't know squat about science, most of them just end up regurgitating stuff. Sometimes random irrelevant facts are added, sometimes important information is stripped out. Mentioning that both hearts are from sows without mentioning why seems strange. There could be a reason why, or it could have just been an extraneous fact that was included..
Now, the sentence from TFA ("Thatte and his group harvested two female pig hearts and placed them in two different containers.") is very similar to a sentence in a cited source here ("The researchers harvested hearts from female pigs, stored them in one of the two solutions, then biopsied them at several points over the next four hours.") Was there an original story somewhere that said why sow hearts were preferable, or was it just a random detail that someone added without context? Unfortunately, I can't access what appears to be the original paper at the moment to find out either way.
I have been paid to work in a research lab. I have also been paid to work for a newspaper. The interaction between science and the media fascinates me. And in my experience, there's a lot of truth to this comic.
Yeah, I'm hoping for a response from someone who does know. Thanks for making gross, incorrect assumptions about me, though.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.