Heart Stem Cell Research

Increase understanding of how diseases occur.

Heart stem cell research.

In a study published last february in the lancet researchers treated 17 heart attack patients with an infusion of stem cells taken from their own hearts. Johns hopkins patient bill beatty was the second person in the world to receive stem cells derived from his own heart tissue. Jim dearing of louisville ky one of the first men in the world to receive heart stem cells might have helped start a medical revolution that could lead to a cure for heart failure. Both embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells mature cells that are manipulated back to a stem cell state can be harnessed to create new heart cells.

By watching stem cells mature into cells in bones heart muscle nerves and other organs and tissue researchers and doctors may better understand how diseases and conditions develop. Transplantation of pluripotent stem cell derived cardiac cells have demonstrated substantial benefits to cardiac function in animal models of heart disease. Researchers and doctors hope stem cell studies can help to. How stem cell research could help repair heart attack damage stem cell research could reveal new ways to help us mend broken hearts as sarah kidner discovers.

It was fortuitous timing. The goal of this research is to eventually provide cardiac patients with stem cells that can regenerate heart tissue that has been damaged. Some researchers feel that these advances are imminent while others believe there is a great deal of work yet to be done. The difficulty is that the heart cells made with stem cells resemble the heart cells of an infant rather than adult heart cells.

Much of that work is in its early stages focusing on the safety of the procedures safety always comes first in testing a new treatment. Beatty was an ideal candidate for a clinical trial and soon received an infusion of stem cells derived from his own heart tissue making him the second patient in the world to undergo the procedure. A new treatment using stem cells which have the potential to grow into a variety of heart cell types could potentially repair and regenerate damaged heart tissue. Since the cedars sinai team completed the world s first cardiac stem cell infusion in 2009 additional insights have emerged from this and related work including the discovery in animals that iron infused cardiac stem cells can be guided with a magnet to damaged areas of the heart dramatically increasing their retention and healing potential.

Stem cell treatments are already being tested in people.