“BiVACOR, an innovative titanium heart, made headlines last week after sustaining an Australian man for 100 days while he waited for a donor transplant,” reports The Doomslayer:
The 100-day milestone is not particularly notable on its own—people with artificial hearts have been living that long since the 1980s. However, BiVACOR is special. Unlike other artificial hearts, which tend to be complex and finicky machines, BiVACOR has only one moving part. That part is also special: instead of a traditional pump with valves and diaphragms, BiVACOR uses a magnetically levitated rotor that pumps blood without generating mechanical friction.
Cardiologists hope this elegant and frictionless design will make the heart more durable, possibly even allowing it to function as a permanent replacement.
Nature notes that “The device is used as a stopgap for people with heart failure who are waiting for a donor heart, and previous recipients of this type of artificial heart had remained in US hospitals while it was in place…The man lived with the device for more than three months until he underwent surgery to receive a donated human heart. The man is recovering well, according to a statement from St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney in Australia, where the operations were conducted. The Australian is the sixth person globally to receive the device, known as BiVACOR, but the first to live with it for more than a month.”
In other news, scientists created a “woolly mouse” on the way to recreating the extinct woolly mammoth.
Genetic engineering recently produced pork and bacon that people who are allergic to pork can eat.
A genetically-modified chicken lays eggs that people allergic to eggs can eat. Scientists have genetically engineered a cow that produces human insulin in its milk.
A virus is being used to cure deafness in new gene therapy. And scientists have engineered a virus to steal proteins from the HIV virus, in hopes of eliminating AIDS.
