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2044970

52 February 25 • 2016

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Technion Team
Finds Way To Train
Cardiac Cells

I

n a breakthrough that could change
the future of pacemakers, Technion-
Israel Institute of Technology in
Haifa researchers have used mechanical
stimulation to “train” cardiac cells to beat
at a given rate.
The team’s find-
ings, published in late
January in Nature
Physics, also demon-
strate for the first time
that direct physical
contact with the car-
diac cells isn’t required
to synchronize their
Shelly Tzlil
beating. As long as
the cardiac cells are in the tissue being
mechanically stimulated, they are trained
by the stimulation, with long-lasting
effects that persist even after it is stopped.
“Cell-cell communication is essential
for growth, development and function,”
explains Assistant Professor Shelly Tzlil
of the Technion faculty of mechanical
engineering. “We have shown that cells
are able to communicate with each other
mechanically by responding to deforma-
tions created by their neighbors. The
range of mechanical communication is
greater than that of electrical and chemi-
cal interactions.
“Another significant discovery is that
the duration of cell pacing is greater when
the stimulus is mechanical, indicating
that mechanical communication induces
long-term alterations within the cell.”
The stimulation was applied by an
artificial “mechanical cell,” consisting of
a tiny probe that generated (via cyclical
indenting and pulling) periodic deforma-
tions in the underlying cardiac tissue. The
deformations mimicked those generated
by a beating cardiac cell that was also in
the tissue. After a brief 10-minute train-
ing period, the cardiac cell synchronized
its beating rate with the mechanical cell.
Furthermore, the cardiac cell maintained
the induced beating rate for more than
one hour after mechanical stimulation
was stopped.
“In this study, we show that an isolated
cardiac cell can be trained to beat at a
given frequency by mechanically stimu-
lating the underlying cardiac tissue,” Tzlil
says. “Mechanical communication plays
an important role in cardiac physiology,
and is essential for converting electri-
cal pacing into synchronized beating.
Impaired mechanical communication
will lead to arrhythmias even when elec-
trical conduction is working properly.
The medical implication is that adding
mechanical elements to electrical pace-
makers will significantly improve their
efficiency.”

*

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