A patch of lab-grown heart muscle has treated a woman with heart failure, following earlier success in monkeys.

The results, published this month in Nature, were led by the University Medical Centre Göttingen (UMG) and University Medical Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), both Germany, and made use of pluripotent stem cells in the body that can be induced to form any type of cell – in this case, heart cells.

These were then embedded in a gel of collagen, to form a patch of heart muscle.

Earlier studies at the German Primate Center (DPZ), also in Göttingen, first grafted the patch onto monkeys and confirmed it could improve heart function and strengthen heart pumping.

The patch consists of up to 200 million cells, and can be grafted onto the heart to build new muscle – a particularly important application for conditions such as heart failure. 

This led to a ‘breakthrough’ clinical trial, using the patches, for a woman with a history of heart failure. After the operation her condition remained stable enough that she could have a heart transplant.

Ingo Kutschka, a heart surgeon at UMG, said: “We now have, for the first time, a laboratory-grown biological transplant available which has the potential to stabilise and strengthen the heart muscle.”