Patients with end-stage heart failure often die waiting for a heart transplant. Newly engineered heart muscle patches currently undergoing clinical trials may provide a new treatment option for those in need. "We now have, for the first time, a laboratory-grown biological transplant available which has the potential to stabilize and strengthen the heart muscle," says Ingo Kutschka, the director of the department of cardiothoracic surgery at University Medical Center Göttingen.