THURSDAY, Oct. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers report a major step toward the goal of literally rebuilding a broken heart -- creating a strip of working heart muscle in the laboratory by using a newly identified human cardiac master stem cell.


"This work moves us closer to heart stem cell therapy," said Dr. Kenneth Chien, director of the Massachusetts General Center for Cardiovascular Research, a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and leader of a group reporting the work online Oct. 15 in Science.


That therapy, he said, would be "almost like slapping a Band-Aid on the heart."


One possibility is that a thin layer of muscle cells of the ventricles, the heart chambers that pump blood to the body, would be placed over the area of tissue damaged by a heart attack, where it would expand and grow into working heart muscle. Another is that the cells would be injected into the damaged area, with the hope that they would grow to form healthy new tissue.