Sian Harding | The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart

Sian Harding | The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart | Talks at Google

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Sian Harding-a world leader in cardiac research-discusses her book The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart, as she explores the relation between the emotions and heart function, reporting that the heart not only responds to our emotions, but it also creates them. The condition known as Broken Heart Syndrome, for example, is a real disorder that can follow bereavement or stress.
Your heart is a miracle in motion, a marvel of construction unsurpassed by any human-made creation. It beats 100,000 times every day-if you were to live to 100, that would be more than 3 billion beats across your lifespan. Despite decades of effort in labs all over the world, we have not yet been able to replicate the heart's perfect engineering. But, as Sian Harding shows us in "The Exquisite Machine", new scientific developments are opening up the mysteries of the heart. And this explosion of new science-ultrafast imaging, gene editing, stem cells, artificial intelligence, and advanced sub-light microscopy-has crucial, real-world consequences for health and well-being.
"The Exquisite Machine" describes the evolutionary forces that have shaped the heart's response to damage, the astonishing rejuvenating power of stem cells, how we can avoid heart disease, and why it can be so hard to repair a damaged heart. It tells the stories of patients who have had the devastating experiences of a heart attack, chaotic heart rhythms, or stress-induced acute heart failure, and it describes how cutting-edge technologies are enabling experiments and clinical trials that will lead us to new solutions to the worldwide scourge of heart disease.
Get the book here goo.gle/3ROjdmR.
Sian Harding is Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. She has been Head of the Cardiovascular Division there, and Director of the British Heart Foundation Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine Centre. Her work has focused on the myocardium in heart failure, especially beta-adrenergic mechanisms. She was Scientific PI on the first UK Gene therapy Trial in LVAD patients, aimed at improving cardiac contractility. Professor Harding is former President of the European Section of the International Society for Heart Research and Board member of the British Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. She was Special Advisor to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on Regenerative Medicine. Sian has been given a Lifetime Achievement award from the European Society of Cardiology HFA and will receive the Imperial College Medal this year.
Moderated by Suzette Bishop.

Пікірлер: 10

@drmkiwi Жыл бұрын

Good stuff, thank you Sian & Google. Absolutely fascinating and compelling. Cheers, David

@brandonlamontcooper8141 Жыл бұрын

thank you #Google

@t1relaxation Жыл бұрын

I just read your beautiful book. If you get this question, is it possible to make personalized heart cells and freeze them for possible later use?

@bitchoflivingblah Жыл бұрын

The answer is yes. Your cells skin cells can be reprogrammed to make embryonic stem cells and can then be used to make cardiomyocytes (heart cells) and then you can freeze these cells. However, the number of cells needed for viable transplantation is huge, 100 million cells, this also gives an idea of how many cells die following a heart attack. There are other problems such as the cells needing to integrate with the host tissues, if the transplanted cells do not electrically integrate with the host cells you'll cause arrhythmias which will lead to a heart attack. As you can imagine fixing hearts is a really difficult problem. So, probably the best solution is to grow a personalised heart in an animal, like a pig - this procedure is called xenotransplanation. Using this technique scientists have made mouse pancreases in rats then transplanted those pancreata back into the mouse - and they worked! They can you the same with kidneys. So this is the future because you can make a complete functioning and new organ bespoke to the individual so you would have minimal if no immune rejection.

@t1relaxation Жыл бұрын

@@bitchoflivingblah Thank you for your response. I'm currently in my 50's and in good health. I hope to live to be a centenarian (in 2071) but I know my organs won't be functioning as they are now. I'm counting on the research you just explained to be refined in the next decades so it will be a common operation.

@bitchoflivingblah Жыл бұрын

@@t1relaxation there are strategies you can use now to increase your median lifespan and perhaps one or two to increase your maximum lifespan. The easier is fasting, which does the same thing as rapamycin and has been shown in most model animals to increase maximum lifespan from an average of 79 years to 95 years - what you were looking for. These two methods work in the same way they reduce the activation of a single gene mTOR which results in greater ageing. Ageing isn't uniform, so whilst memory is retained, bone health isn't so you might need some weight-training to maintain that. So a 20% increase for virtually nothing is probably the best strategy for you. Also all you need to do is have a daily extended fast - it's simply missing breakfast the gap allows your body to undergo repair (autophagy) - it also means because you miss breakfast that you are calorifically restricted basically you eat less. In mice this can sometimes lead to a >25% increase in lifespan. Here is the link to the study: Daily Fasting Improves Health and Survival in Male Mice Independent of Diet Composition and Calories. Mitchell SJ, Bernier M, Mattison JA, Aon MA, Kaiser TA, Anson RM, Ikeno Y, Anderson RM, Ingram DK, de Cabo R. Cell Metab. 2018 Aug 24. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30197301/ Its hard to do in the west because of the ready availability of cheap food. Good luck.