• Question: Have you ever dissected or experimented with a human heart?

    Asked by DonaR to Praveen, Michael, Loan, Gemma, Cristina on 12 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Gemma Barron

      Gemma Barron answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      Hi @DonaR,
      Thank you for your question. No, I have never dissected or experimented with a human heart. My work colleagues do experiments with hearts from other animals and I work alongside them but, I myself don’t do these types of experiments as I am working on understanding more about blood vessel formation in relation to cancer within obese individuals.
      I hope that answers your question. Thanks, Gemma

    • Photo: Cristina Villa del Campo

      Cristina Villa del Campo answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      Hi DonaR,
      I haven’t dissected human hearts but I have worked with samples coming from patients. During surgery the surgeon removes a little piece (to solve their illness) and those pieces can be used to grow the human cells in the lab and study them. Working with human hearts is very hard, it is not easy to access them so even working with the cells we get is very very useful for us to understand things better

    • Photo: Michael Schneider

      Michael Schneider answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      Yes. Dissection, mainly in my first year as a medical student, learning anatomy. Experimenting, many times over the years. It’s important to know what changes occur in the human heart itself during disease, to suggest hypotheses, guide our experiments, and inform our attempts to create new and better treatments. Also, for our work on cardiac stem cells, we use small pieces of human heart tissue, so we can purify and study the right human cells.

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