Gillian asks how long will it take for the research to become practical

Hello Gillian, thanks for your question.

The nature of research is that it tends to be a steady process. It’s rarely the ‘big bang’ breakthroughs that headlines report, more a stepwise process with each research project adding another small piece to the jigsaw.

However, a decade ago we couldn’t have predicted how far we’d have come already, so we can’t predict what discoveries our scientists will make tomorrow, next week, or next year.
Having said that, our estimates for the Mending Broken Hearts Appeal are that over the next five years, we’ll ramp up our support for leading scientists in laboratories around the UK. We also intend to develop up to two Centres of Regenerative Medicine to facilitate this groundbreaking work.

Within five years we hope to begin early clinical trials, within 10 we aim to be running full trials, and within a further decade we hope people who are living with heart disease will be able to look forward to a brighter future.