KIAH

12:01 p.m. CDT, May 30, 2012

How do you mend a broken heart? Thanks to scientists in Israel, we might soon have an answer.

Dr. Lior Gepstein and his team at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology managed to take skin cells from ailing heart patients and by adding three genes and valproic acid (used to treat epilepsy), they turned the cells into beating heart tissue.

And it was not just any old heart cells, but, according to Gepstein, "heart cells that are healthy, that are young and resemble heart cells at the day that the patient was born."

The researchers put the new beating heart tissue into rat hearts and saw it was not rejected, but seemed to establish connections with the rodents' tissue.

Stem cell experts praised the research as promising but urged people not to expect to be stopping by the clinic for a fresh heart any time soon. Gepstein's researchers say clinical trials should begin within the next 10 years.

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Skin cells turned into beating heart cells

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