via ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
When patients have a heart attack, the muscles are damaged, forming scar tissue which disrupts the heart's normal function.
Dr Ian Alexander, the head of gene therapy at the Children's Medical Research Institute, says this process may now be reversible.
"What we have been able to do is to take scar tissue cells, take them into the lab and reprogram them using genetic technology to become a type of cell that you would find in the human heart," he said.
