MIT Researchers Grow Beating Heart Tissue

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report that they have been able to grow heart tissue the size of a dime from cells harvested from rats. When an electrical impulse is passed through the tissue it twitches like a beating heart. This represents the first time scientists have succeeded in using an electrical current to produce dense heart tissue that beats in a rhythm mimicking that of a live animal's heart. The next step for the researchers is to patch damaged hearts of other rats to see if it can behave like a cardiac bandage. If successful this could eventually lead to treatments for heart attacks and other cardiac diseases that can damage and kill large amounts of heart muscle cells."