Boston Team Builds Living Heart Tissue for Children
Boston Children's Hospital and partners launch THUMPIN', a project to grow heart parts for infants and young children with congenital heart disease.
Updated on Nov. 7, 2026 in Heart Disease
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Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard SEAS, NTT Research and Brigham and Women's Hospital announced the THUMPIN' partnership on October 21. The effort is supported by a contract of up to $29.6 million over as many as five years from ARPA-H.
Why it matters
Heart defects are the most common type of birth defect, and a baby is born in the U.S. every 15 minutes with a congenital heart defect. Repairs made in infancy often need to be redone as children grow, which is why researchers are pursuing tissue designed to grow alongside the child.
ARPA-H is providing up to $29.6 million over as many as five years for the THUMPIN' effort, which is building heart tissue from living cells. The project has not yet reported results in people, and the timeline for clinical testing remains undisclosed.
The players
Boston Children's Hospital
A Boston-based pediatric hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School that leads the THUMPIN' project.
ARPA-H
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a U.S. federal agency that funds high-risk biomedical research and provides the contract supporting THUMPIN'.
The details
THUMPIN' is led by Boston Children's Hospital and aims to create living heart tissue and heart parts for infants and young children. Researchers plan to engineer heart valves, blood vessel grafts, heart muscle patches, parts of the heart's electrical system, single ventricles and eventually an entire heart, with work moving from lab testing to large-animal studies.
Timeline
October 21: THUMPIN' partnership announced.
Up to five years: duration of the ARPA-H contract supporting the project.
Health Landscape
The project extends ARPA-H's model of funding high-risk, high-reward biomedical work into pediatric cardiac care. It moves beyond repairs with fixed materials, which cannot grow with the child, toward tissue built from living cells.
Families of children with congenital heart defects may eventually have access to repairs that grow with the child rather than requiring repeated surgeries. The project has not yet produced treatments available to patients, and any clinical use depends on future U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.
The takeaway
Repairs that keep pace with a growing child could reduce how often infants and children must return for surgery. Such benefits remain research goals until studies in animals and people are completed.
Further reading
For related coverage, see Heart Disease reporting on congenital conditions.
Source note: This article includes information reported by TechFinancials.
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Should the federal government fund experimental medical research like living heart tissue?
