A Mississippi University for Women alumna and a regenerative medical researcher believes building a functioning heart in a lab for transplant is about two years away from becoming reality.
“Imagine a future where you go to a lab, and you give somebody blood, and they store your blood. They (then) actually turn your blood cells into stem cells, and they grow billions of those, and then they bank them,” said Dr. Doris Taylor during a presentation Thursday at The W’s Nissan Auditorium. “And then … when you get sick about a year before you need a transplant, your cells are incorporated into this universal empty heart scaffold that we figured out how to make from a pig heart.”
That process, which has taken more than 21 years of Taylor’s career to develop and research, will revolutionize transplant procedures and alleviate the country’s backlog of transplant applicants, she said.
Taylor spoke about her research and educational journey during a lecture called “Building Heart in 2026: What I Learned at The W and Beyond” as part of The W’s homecoming week.
Now chief executive officer of the biotechnical research company Organamet Bio, Taylor said The W and its faculty gave her the tools needed to lead research teams and create this lifesaving procedure.
After graduating from The W in 1977, Taylor earned her doctorate in pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
After graduating in 1987, she moved on to Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she saw her first hands-on experience with tissue engineering. She said her research in stem cell procedures early on in her career showed her the potential for them to heal more significant medical issues.
“I’ve had a couple of ‘Wow’ moments in my life, and one of them was when we first saw cells in the heart after we had transplanted them, and (I was) like, ‘Oh, my God, this is working,’” Taylor said. “And then, standing in the operating room when the first patient got (stem) cells, I pretty much cried.”
Taylor, during her career in medical research, was credited with the first functional repair of an injured heart with stem cells in 1998. In 2008, her research team was also credited for developing the process for removing cells from organs like hearts to make them into usable scaffolds for an organ replacement, Taylor said.
That new organ decellularizing process she first tested on mice was named one of the top 10 research advances by the American Heart Association and was published in the renowned scientific journal Nature Medicine. She was also nominated as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009.
The breakthrough was also the catalyst for Taylor’s proposed new method of creating viable hearts for transplants.
A safer way
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2023, 919,032 people died from cardiovascular disease, the CDC’s website said.
Taylor said research into heart disease and treatment options has largely lacked because of the stigma surrounding the disease.
“I think one of the reasons cancer is moving forward (and) one of the reasons we don’t talk about heart disease … is we blame people for their heart disease,” Taylor said.
In the United States, there are about 10 donor heart transplants performed a day, with about 4,000 people in need of a transplant at any given time, Taylor said.
Taylor said even if a heart transplant is successful, a person with that new heart has to take expensive medication to prevent the body from rejecting the organ. She hopes her research will lead to safer, more successful and less expensive transplants.
“You only get a heart if it’s an emergency procedure, if a heart is available and if you’re lucky,” Taylor said. “… Every day for the rest of your life, you have to take toxic drugs so you don’t reject it. … Those toxic drugs cause diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and they immunosuppress you. … And in addition to that, they can cost up to $30,000 a month, and if you can’t afford it, you won’t get a heart.”
Taylor said while Organamet Bio’s initial trials with monkeys and pigs have been successful so far, it is still waiting to ensure those animals live extended lives with their transplants before making the next step to human testing.
Zarin Tasnim Raya, a junior chemistry major at MUW, said she was inspired by Taylor’s research and the advancements she has made since leaving Columbus.
Tasnim Raya’s dream has been to work in health sciences, and she said she left Thursday’s talk more optimistic about her future in the field.
“It gives me a lot of hope for my future too, because as an aspiring scientist, I feel like it’s really nice to know that an alum was able to do all of these great things.” Tasnim Raya said. “… (And) as a woman making it in the field, I feel like it might be hard. So seeing her as a woman go on and do all these great things, I think it’s very inspirational.”
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