Dr. Doris Taylor said she cried the first time she held a human heart in her hand.
The Mississippi University for Women alumna is one of the leading medical professionals in the international regenerative medicine research efforts, particularly cardiovascular regenerative medicine. Now, Taylor’s research is attempting to build a heart by using stem cell therapies to help a non-functioning heart regenerate — a process which she hopes will one day replace organ transplant when it comes to saving those with heart failure.
Taylor talked about her research at the opening of MUW’s annual II+C (Imagine, Inspire, Challenge) Symposium, for which she’s a co-founder, Thursday night in Rent Auditorium on campus. In her presentation “The Art and Science of Building a Beating Heart,” she and her friend artist Dario Robleto discussed Taylor’s research — research Robleto said is “not only groundbreaking science” but “philosophical” and extremely emotional for Taylor.
“(Hearts) do make us feel,” she said. “… The day I hold a human heart we have made — through the sterile container of course — I will cry again.”
The focus on emotion as well as medicine’s intersection with arts and humanities fields is part of the theme of this year’s symposium “Stem Cell Therapies in 2020: Healing, Hope or Hype?” When introducing Taylor, MUW Dean of Arts, Sciences and Education Brian Anderson said MUW has emphasized the intersection between science and medicine with arts and humanities with programs such as its thriving music therapy study.
During her talk, Taylor said heart disease is the No. 1 killer of men, women and children and that the only cure right now for heart failure is a heart transplant. Every 10 minutes, a new person joins the organ transplant waiting list and 3,200 people wait on the list every day.
“We only transplant 2,300 hearts a year,” she said. “People need organs and we don’t have them.”
She said the Texas Heart Institute where she works has been working for 50 years to build hearts — first mechanical hearts and later bioartificial hearts, which is what Taylor’s research focuses on. Stem cell research is the key to building a beating heart, she said.
“I think the cool thing about tonight and tomorrow is what you’re going to see is regenerative medicine and stem cells, 3D bioprinting … all the things you’re going to hear about tomorrow are really about people imagining a cure,” she said. “Imagining that we don’t just have to treat symptoms, that we can actually treat and cure a disease. We don’t know all the answers but every single day we overcome another hurtle in this pathway forward.”
At the end of the presentation, there was a brief question and answer session during which students asked Taylor to elaborate on a point she brought up during her talk — that female hearts are stiffer than male hearts, which Taylor theorizes is because women have to have physically stronger organs to endure pregnancy — and whether she believes emotion affects the physiological aspects of the heart.
In answer to the latter, Taylor said emotions have immediate effects on the heart — fear causes the release of adrenaline which makes the heart beat faster, while meditation and relaxation cause it to beat slower.
“There’s a disease called broken heart syndrome, or takotsubo disease, where great significant emotional distress can cause symptoms that are identical to a heart attack,” Taylor said. “One of the unique things about takotsubo is that people tend to recover. They don’t tend to have the long-lasting effects as a heart attack — not 100 percent true, but to a large degree.
“There’s no question but that emotions are tired into our heart,” she added.
The symposium continued today with further panels and presentations on stem cell research, such as a presentation on stem cells and cancer by Dr. Luiz C. Sampaio, also of the Texas Heart Institute; 3D printing with stem cells with the University of Minnesota Medical School’s professor Angela Panoskaltsis, who is director of the university’s 3D bioprinting facility; and finally a roundtable with all panelists on what the next 10 years of stem cell research could bring.
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