For many years, scientists worldwide have been searching for ways to stimulate the regeneration
of damaged heart tissue.
The tiny fish can regrow fins and even
repair damaged heart tissue with genes called fibroblast growth factors and neuregulin 1, respectively.
In the United States, about 720,000 residents experience a heart attack annually, which means that hundreds of thousands of heart patients are living with the disabling complications of heart disease who could benefit from therapies to repair and
regenerate damaged heart tissue.
Angiograms revealed no blockages of the arteries, for instance, and the researchers didn't find elevated levels of enzymes released
by damaged heart tissue.
Julia Polak from Imperial College London in the UK believes this is a big step towards creating a scaffold
for damaged heart tissue.
«A high - resolution ultrasound revealed harmonized pumping where iPS cells were introduced to the
previously damaged heart tissue,» says Satsuki Yamada, M.D., Ph.D., first author of the study.
Another potential application for the gels is delivering drugs, such as growth factors, that could help repair
damaged heart tissue after a heart attack.
The potential of iPS cells to help treat everything
from damaged heart tissue to Parkinson's disease, has prompted intensive research that has looked into the use of skin fibroblast cells as an alternative to controversial embryonic stem cells.
For example, director of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, Deepak Srivastava, MD, believes the day is near when he could use cellular reprogramming to treat heart disease by
converting damaged heart tissue into beating heart muscle cells after a heart attack.
A big plus is that this represents a new way to
fix damaged heart tissue - and since the heart is over 50 % fibroblasts, there are ample cells to reprogram.
Patients with
damaged heart tissue showed a reduction in the infarct zone (area of damage left after a heart attack), thus reducing symptoms of a heart which has become congested.
Okyanos cardiac cell therapy targets the restoration of blood flow to the heart and repairs
damaged heart tissue caused by heart attack or ischemic and non-ischemic heart disease.
Srivastava, director of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, was selected for his innovative cardiology research on the regeneration
of damaged heart tissue.
5/15/2008 New Role Found for a Cardiac Progenitor Population In a discovery that could one day lead to an understanding of how to
regenerate damaged heart tissue, researchers at the University of California, San Diego have found that parent cells involved in embryonic development of the epicardium — the cell l...
On average the transplanted stem cells regenerated 40 percent of
the damaged heart tissue, said Dr. Michael Laflamme, UW assistant professor of pathology, whose team was principally responsible for generating the replacement heart muscle cells.
The researchers found that over subsequent weeks, the stem - cell derived heart muscle cells infiltrated into
the damaged heart tissue, then matured, assembled into muscle fibers and began to beat in synchrony with the macaque heart cells.
Left untreated for as little as five days, strep could produce autoantibodies that
damage heart tissue, resulting in rheumatic fever.
In a study published online in Circulation Research late last year, Chaudhry and colleagues found that fetal cells in mice migrated to the mother's heart, differentiated into functioning cardiac cells, and accelerated repair to
damaged heart tissue.
After bypass surgery and other cardiac therapies, increased blood flow to the oxygen - deprived heart often oxidizes and
damages heart tissue.
«After two months,
the damaged heart tissue looked normal and functioned well.»
Scientists are not yet sure why, but they are exploring the possibilities around increasing stem cell survival, expanding the numbers of patient - derived stem cells, and finding agents that can attract stem cells to
damaged heart tissue for future trials.
Okyanos treatment targets
the damaged heart tissue and stimulates the growth of new blood vessels through the process of angiogenesis using adult adipose -(fat) derived regenerative cells.
The scope of research in the Center also includes approaches to salvage
damaged heart tissue with progenitor cells and how angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels) can be manipulated to restore blood flow to damaged heart tissue.