It’s Alive! Researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital have succeeded in taking embryonic stem cells from mice and growing cardiovascular tissue. The research team, led by Dr. Kenneth Chien, believes that a similar process may one day serve to repair cardiac damage in humans. The work was recently published in the journal Science. You can see the mouse heart cells beating at different speeds in the video from Boston.com after the break.

Cardiac injury is some of the most difficult damage to heal in the body. When the heart undergoes massive damage from a coronary, you have few options – replace broken parts, add a pacemaker, or get a whole new heart. The work done by Chien and his team focuses on creating a new way to repair tissue damage. Instead of adding in mechanical parts, or finding a donor organ, stem cells may be used to replace and heal the damaged cardiac tissue. Eventually, those patients that develop a myocardial injury could have pluripotent stem cells harvested from their skin, marrow, or fat which would then be introduced into the heart via injection. No open heart surgery, no pacemakers, just stem cells and a needle.

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