Captain Space-Heart

MERLN's Lorenzo Moroni coordinates a European consortium that develops a technology to create heart ventricles in space using magnetic and acoustic levitation. The subsequent research on the International Space Station will have significant benefits for the humble inhabitants of Earth. Why in space, you may wonder. Because everything's more awesome in space! Also, in keeping with NASA's and ESA's ambitions to have permanently inhabited basecamps on the moon, first aid becomes more tricky. "The field of biofabrication, where we try to engineer tissues by depositing cells and biomaterials in an automated fashion for therapeutic purposes, is already quite advanced and those space agencies are open to supporting research that promises to help them," Moroni explains. To the Professor of Biofabrication for Regenerative Medicine and his team, space has a very pragmatic advantage: things levitate easily. "We will make biological substitutes similar to cardiac ventricles using a mixture of magnetic and acoustic levitation.