The techniques could eventually be used to create a full-sized heart, scientists suggest to the New Scientist.
In a separate study published in the journal Heart, scientists at the Foundation CNR-Tuscan Region in Pisa, Italy, found that heavy cocaine use also causes serious damage to the heart, without any obvious symptoms at the early stages.
In order to use a robot to bypass more than one blockage in a coronary artery, to avoid using a heart-lung machine and to work on an artery other than the one at the front of the heart, scientists have to figure out methods of getting at the sides and the back of a beating heart.
Kidneys transplanted from a cadaver keep working just as long as those taken from a brain-dead patient with a beating heart, scientists have found in a study that offers a promising way to ease a severe shortage of donor organs.
Heart: Scientists of my generation didn't speak much about the heart unless, like me, they were working on myosin structure or some such architectural piece.
To get stem cells taken from one source (such as blood) and develop them into a cell of another type (such as heart), scientists generally use viruses to deliver a package of genes into cells to first get them to turn into stem cells.
Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft sent back the first high-resolution images of Pluto's great white heart, scientists have been puzzling over its origin.
By learning more about the mechanisms through which diabetes damages the heart, scientists may be able to interrupt or forestall the injury, extending patients' life span and improving their quality of life along the way.
Healing hearts: Scientists are testing new stem-cell therapies that could help heal the ailing heart.
Patching hearts: Scientists from Harvard have genetically engineered mice to express two different colored markers in specific heart cells (shown here in red and green), allowing them to isolate cardiac stem cells that produce only heart muscle.
