(AP) - Researchers seeking new treatments for heart disease say they've grown a rat heart in a lab and started it beating.
The director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota says it may sound "like science fiction," but she and her research team still have a long way to go.
The long-term goal is that scientists could use this type of process with either human hearts from cadavers or pig hearts, with cells stripped off and replaced with cells from someone needing a heart transplant.
An estimated five million people live with heart failure and about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Approximately 50,000 die annually waiting for a heart donor.
The study appears in today's online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.
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