Sarvazyan was looking for universal donor cells the body would not reject and started watching some cardiac muscle cells--myocytes--affecting blood flow.
She thought, why not use these and wrap them in a vein and make a little pump? Essentially,, she created a miniature heart.
Worms have these--to push the blood along.
Older adults also get venous insufficiency--pooling up--say in the legs.
These myocytes start beating like a heart--so engineers can build a structure with the patient's stem cells.
They are calling it CardioVein Technology. It's still in the tinkering stages--but they are excited.
