For the first time, scientists have succeeded in artificially mimicking ion signaling in heart muscle cells. To succeed, LiU researchers used organic electronics based on conductive plastics. The survey results are nature communicationsopening up new types of prosthetics, cardiac implants, and sensors in the long term.
There’s a reason nature gave heart muscle cells this particular type of electrical signal. We don’t just want to mimic biology, we want to take advantage of the principles that make these signals so effective. ”
Simone Fabiano, Professor of Materials Science, Linköping University
The human heart beats approximately 2.6 billion times during an average lifetime. This happens continuously, 24 hours a day, throughout your life. One of the keys to the tireless work of heart muscle cells is the transport of potassium, sodium, and calcium ions in and out of the cell. Ion transport initiates electrical impulses called action potentials. This causes the heart muscle to contract and pump blood forward.
However, because cardiac myocytes are different from other cells in the body, it has been difficult to artificially mimic this ion transport and action potential. This is because ion channels that transport calcium function relatively slowly compared to sodium and potassium channels.
“This very slowness creates a bottleneck when you try to use conventional electronics designed to be fast. In this case, organic electronics are better because they can transport both ions and electrons, allowing them to communicate like cells in the body,” says Deis Gao, a postdoctoral fellow in LiU’s Institute of Organic Electronics and lead author of a scientific paper published in 2006. nature communications.
Instead, he and his colleagues at LOE’s Campus Norrkoping developed artificial heart muscle cells made of conductive plastic that mimic the cells’ electrical functions, or action potentials.
The research group has previously developed artificial nerve cells that mimic the properties of biological nerve cells. In the absence of hardware that could mimic specialized ion signaling, the development of artificial cardiomyocytes was a natural next step.
According to Simone Fabiano, there are two main reasons to use organic electronics to mimic the electrical dynamics of heart muscle cells. One is that researchers can better understand the material properties needed to reproduce biologically similar signals. Another is that such systems could be used as bioelectronic models and interfaces in the long term.
“Because this is hardware, we can study in a controlled way how changes in ion concentration or pH, for example, affect electrical signals in places like the heart. In the future, we hope to be able to connect such systems more closely to biological heart muscle cells,” says Simone Fabiano.
The researchers envision, for example, how this technology could contribute to miniature “natural” pacemakers, implants that can activate muscles, and sensors that can detect problems in heart function early and initiate countermeasures. But this depends on solving important problems.
“Artificial cells must be able to receive signals from living cells and transmit those signals to other cells. Artificial heart muscle cells could then act as a bridge, bringing us much closer to biomedical applications,” says Deis Gao.
This research was primarily funded through the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability, the Swedish Research Council, the European Research Council, the Marie Skłodowska Curie Action Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Vinova), and the Swedish government’s Advanced Functional Materials Science Strategic Research Area (AFM). Linköping University.
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Reference magazines:
Gao, D. Others. (2026). Organic artificial cardiomyocytes. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-72584-5. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72584-5
