Mending Broken Hearts Appeal

Through our Mending Broken Hearts Appeal, we're funding ground-breaking research that could 'mend broken hearts' in as little as ten years' time.

At the moment when someone suffers a heart attack, their heart muscle is permanently damaged, making the heart less able to pump blood around the body. Many people who survive a heart attack have a reduced quality of life because they develop heart failure.

Impact of heart failure

Within five years many more people in the UK will be living with heart failure, which is a progressive, debilitating condition. For someone with heart failure, normal everyday tasks such as having a shower or bath, doing the shopping or simply playing with the children takes enormous energy and leaves them breathless and exhausted.

Hope lives in our research

We hope to fund more research like this so we can come up with ways to mend the broken hearts of people with heart failure:

• Professor Chris Denning is taking people's skin cells and turning them into new heart muscle cells
• Dr Nicola Smart hopes to teach our hearts to heal themselves 
• Professor Manuel Mayr's research could make stem cell research more robust
• At Oxford Professor Roger Patient is unlocking the regenerative secrets of the zebrafish

More information about the Mending Broken Hearts Appeal