A Japanese venture company has come up with the world's first regenerative treatment for severe heart failure using iPS cells.

Heartseed, launched by Keio University professor emeritus Fukuda Keiichi, creates heart muscle cells using human iPS cells and transplants them into patients.

The process is expected to make up for the inability of cardiac muscle cells to regenerate on their own.

The method involves making myocardial spheres each containing about 1,000 heart muscle cells.

In a clinical trial, the company transplanted about 50 million heart muscle cells each into five patients with severe heart failure and confirmed the treatment's safety and effectiveness.

Heartseed said it has obtained approval for the procedure from an independent safety assessment committee.

It plans to conduct a clinical trial involving transplanting 150 million heart muscle cells into patients and aims to obtain approval for this in 2027.