Heart is driven by electric impulses given by pacemaker cells, However there are fewer than 10,000 pacemaker cells in the heart out of billions of other heart cells, Sometimes these pulses can fail, resulting in an erratic heartbeat. Normally, this problem is addressed by surgery and the insertion of an electric pacemaker device.
Pacemakers certainly provide a viable solution to the problem, but they’re clunky, they break easily, they often lead to infections and they’re limited by their finite battery life. Researchers Nidhi Kapoor, Hee Cheol Cho, and their colleagues injected a genetically modified virus carrying the crucial Tbx18 gene into guinea pigs. This caused ordinary heart cells to transform into the SAN cells thus acquiring the exact characteristics of the pacemaker cells.
Once safety and efficacy can be proven in humans it will be available through direct injection or transplantation.
