{"id":221913,"date":"2025-09-16T00:03:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T05:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/engineers-develop-technology-that-stimulates-heart-cells-with-light"},"modified":"2025-09-16T00:03:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T05:03:32","slug":"engineers-develop-technology-that-stimulates-heart-cells-with-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/engineers-develop-technology-that-stimulates-heart-cells-with-light","title":{"rendered":"Engineers develop technology that stimulates heart cells with light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/engineers-develop-technology-that-stimulates-heart-cells-with-light3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a new study, University of California, Irvine chemical and biomolecular engineering researchers report the creation of biomolecules that can help grow light-sensitive heart muscle cells in the laboratory. The development enables a biotechnology that could deliver light-triggered signals to the heart, improving its function, without requiring genetic modifications or invasive procedures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe show for the first time that light can be converted into cardiac stimulatory cues, with <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/synthetic+materials\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">synthetic materials<\/a> made of biomolecules,\u201d said Herdeline Ann Ardo\u00f1a, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. \u201cThis can be beneficial for downstream medical applications, such as in cardiac pacemaking technologies, or helping direct therapeutic patient-derived stem <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cells<\/a> to better mimic adult heart cell features.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2509467122\" target=\"_blank\">findings<\/a> are reported in the <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i>. The paper\u2019s co-first authors are recent Ph.D. graduate Sujeung Lim, and Ze-Fan Yao, previous postdoctoral scholar in the Ardo\u00f1a Research Group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a new study, University of California, Irvine chemical and biomolecular engineering researchers report the creation of biomolecules that can help grow light-sensitive heart muscle cells in the laboratory. The development enables a biotechnology that could deliver light-triggered signals to the heart, improving its function, without requiring genetic modifications or invasive procedures. \u201cWe show for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,19,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}