Building a 'heart patch' (UK)

The British Heart Foundation has awarded two new grants from its Mending Broken Hearts Appeal fund, at a combined cost of more than £500,000. Each funded project holds promise of helping find a way to repair hearts damaged by a heart attack. The two sets of scientists - one at the University of Cambridge, and the other at University College London - are both trying to develop a 'heart patch' to fix to a damaged heart. A 'patch' with the right layout of heart muscle cells, held together by proteins and supporting cells, could form part of a future treatment for some people with heart failure. But making a patch is not easy, because heart muscle has a much more complex structure than many other types of tissue. Different types of cells and supporting structures have to be positioned and connected in precisely the right way to form healthy working tissue