Grow-your-own pacemakers are a step closer to reality, after pioneering experiments in pigs. Scientists turned heart cells into pacemaker cells by injecting a gene. The "biological pacemaker" was able to "effectively cure a disease", said scientists from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles. The British Heart Foundation said applications of the research, published in Science Translational Medicine, were "a long way off".
The researchers injected a gene into pigs with a heart condition that causes a very slow heart rate. The gene therapy converted some of the billions of ordinary heart muscle cells into much rarer specialised cells that kept the heart beating in rhythm. The patch of cells the size of a peppercorn had acted as a pacemaker for two weeks, taking over the function of a conventional pacemaker, said the US team.
