Wired News: A Patch for Broken Hearts

Niklason, who was the first to grow functional human arteries in 2003 has now successfully grown heart cells that she got to beat regularly and in sync.
The researchers started by attaching rat cardiac cells to a three-dimensional collagen scaffold, which acts as a frame for the cells to grow on and then dissolves. They zapped the cells with electrical pulses modeled on a rat heartbeat for several days, inducing them to grow into beating patches about the size of a dime, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online...Continue.