Heart attacks and strokes triggered by electrical misfiring in the heart are among the biggest killers on the planet. Now, researchers have created a “liquid wire” that, when injected into pig hearts, can guide the organs to a normal rhythm. The results, presented here this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, are “impressive and really cool,” says Thomas Mansell, a biomolecular engineer at Iowa State University who was not involved with the work. “It’s an exciting study,” agrees Usha Tedrow, a cardiac electrophysiologist at Harvard Medical School, also not involved in the work. If the findings translate to people, she says, it could save thousands of lives each year.
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