Israel Matzav: Israeli scientists create heart cells from skin cells

Israeli scientists create heart cells from skin cells

Israeli scientists have discovered a way to create beating heart cells with skin cells, making it possible to surgically repair a damaged heart some day.

Israeli scientists have discovered a way to create beating heart cells using human skin cells reprogrammed to become stem cells. The findings could lead to advances in disease research, and could in theory be used to repair damaged or diseased tissues.

Published in the latest issue of Circulation, the findings by Professor Lior Gepstein of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology could make it possible to clinically repair damaged human hearts.

Such an application is at least 10 to 20 years away, says Gepstein, but the process can already be utilized for in-depth study of genetic diseases and the development of personalized drugs for irregular heartbeats and other inherited disorders.

Read the whole thing.

Something else for all those anti-Israel boycotters to boycott.

As Glenn Reynolds would say, "faster, faster."

Israel Matzav: Israeli scientists create heart cells from skin cells