Plans to set up an Australian and New Zealand heart tissue bank have stalled because of a lack of funding.

Cardiologist Diane Fatkin, of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney, said most human heart tissue removed during transplant operations and other procedures was thrown away in waste bins yet was considered a valuable resource by researchers.

"In order to get breakthroughs in terms of new approaches to treatment, it's really important that we can study human tissue," Associate Professor Fatkin said in an interview.

"But there's only special circumstances, like with cardiac transplantation or with some surgical procedures, that you can actually get supplies of human heart tissue for research and at the moment, there's no organised collection.

"A lot of the transplant tissue just gets put in the waste bucket. It's a crying shame."

Prof Fatkin said having a human heart tissue bank would reduce the need for animal experimentation.

She said seven research institutes in Australia and New Zealand had joined forces to form the Australasian Cardiac Bio-Specimen Network (ACBN) aimed at creating a bank of heart tissue and DNA samples for scientific use.

But the project, which would need $2.5 million over five years, is yet to get off the ground because of a lack of research dollars.

Although the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) recommended the plan be funded, Prof Fatkin said not enough money was available and the heart tissue bank missed out.

"We're throwing up our hands in horror and saying Australia needs more dollars spent on heart research," she said.

Prof Fatkin said heart failure was a huge public health problem in Australia and would only get worse as the population aged.

The project has brought together scientists from Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, the Children's Hospital at Westmead, the Baker Heart Research Institute, St Vincent's Institute in Melbourne, the University of Queensland and the Trans-Tasman Sudden Death Task Force, as well as the Victor Chang Institute.

The Sydney Morning Herald