Patches of beating, lab-grown muscle sewn into failing hearts can keep patients alive for years while they wait for a transplant, scientists have shown. In a major breakthrough, 15 patients suffering from heart failure − their hearts had stopped pumping effectively − were implanted with patches grown from stem cells.

Muscle patches generated from stem cells helped ease heart problems in monkeys and a human patient, in a potential advance towards improving treatments for the scourge of cardiac failure. Rhesus macaques’ heart functions improved using the technique,