Researchers at the University of Minnesota have successfully grown in the laboratory a beating rat heart by injecting new heart cells from newborn rats into a decellularized dead rat heat, said a research issued on Sunday's journal Nature Medicine.

Dr. Doris A. Taylor, the head of the research team, and her colleagues washed away all the existing cells from a dead rat heart while leaving the basic collagen structure intact which worked as a scaffold for new heart cells.

Within two weeks, the new cells formed a new beating heart that was able to conduct electrical impulses and pump blood.

Taylor is now conducting similar experiments on pigs.

Working out the details in a pig heart makes a lot more sense because the anatomy of the porcine heart is the closest to humans and pigs are plentiful, she said.

"The next goal will be to see if we can get the heart to pump strongly enough and become mature enough that we can use it to keep an animal alive" in a replacement transplant, Dr. Taylor said.

Tayor's research offers a way to fulfill the promise of using stem cells to grow tailor-made organs for transplant.

Experts not involved in the Minnesota work called Taylor's experiment "a landmark achievement" and "a stunning" advance.

However, they and the Minnesota researchers cautioned that the dream, if it is ever realized, is still at least 10 years away.

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