Dr Keith Baar and his team at at Dundee University in Scotland are developing patches of tissues for use in repairing damaged hearts.

They have grown a tube of heart tissue using cells from newborn rats and are now looking at ways of growing patches of heart tissue, using either skeletal muscle or stem cells.

The tiny pieces of heart tissue beat like a heart, pulsed faster when adrenaline was applied and responded to medicine like a normal organ.

Instead of waiting for someone who is a match for your cell type when you have suffered from heart attack, surgeons could take a little bit of your tissue, grow up a heart patch of your own genetic material and put it into your body. It would also save patients from spending the remainder of their lives on medication.

There’s still much work to be carried out but researchers hope to be able to test the patches in animals within five years and go on to have human trials after that.

Via BBC News.