EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) – HeartWorks, a nonprofit founded to research and fight against congenital heart disease, just opened its world headquarters here in Eau Claire.

They held their grand opening Thursday and they say that their clinical manufacturing department is already up and running.

If you or loved one suffer from congenital heart disease, HeartWorks invites you to become a part of their clinical trials.

“Yeah, we build hearts. So, we literally take a piece of a patient’s skin and we bioengineer it into their stem cells and then convert it into their beating, contracting heart muscle cells. This heart muscle that we bioengineer, we use in clinical trials to rebuild the hearts of babies and adults with congenital heart disease,” said Tim Nelson, the CEO for HeartWorks.

HeartWorks says that 1 in 100 families are affected by congenital heart disease.