Heart heal thyself: a new direction for cardiac research

The British Heart Foundation has launched a new campaign to back research groups looking at ways that encourage the heart to repair itself.

The campaign signals a change in direction in cardiac research. Most of the 50 or so research projects currently running worldwide to find ways of repairing damaged hearts depend on the introduction of an outside source of stem cells.

Launching the campaign, titled “Mending broken hearts,” the foundation’s director, Peter Weissberg, offered two reasons for believing that getting the heart to repair itself is attainable. The first and most obvious …