Tokyo – A hospital in Japan has carried out the world’s first surgery using sheets of commercially available heart muscle stem cells after the groundbreaking therapy was approved this year, one of the surgeons said.

Sheets of muscle cells derived from regenerative products known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, were transplanted into the heart of a woman in her 50s during the hourlong surgery performed on Tuesday.

It marked the first clinical use of the regenerative therapy since it received conditional government approval in March.