“Latest Stem Cells News”

Solving a longstanding mystery, scientists have found that the human heart continues to generate new cardiac cells throughout the life span, although the rate of new cell production slows with age.
The finding, published in the April 3 issue of Science, could open a new path for the treatment of heart diseases such as heart failure and heart attack, experts say.

“We find that the beating cells in the heart, cardiomyocytes, are renewed,” said lead researcher Dr. Jonas Frisen, a professor of stem cell research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. “It has previously not been known whether we were limited to the cardiomyocytes we are born with or if they could be renewed,” he said.
The process of renewing these cells changes over time, Frisen added. In a 20-year-old, about 1% of cardiomyocytes are exchanged each year, but the turnover rate decreases with age to only 0.45% by age 75.

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On February 15 the first bank to preserve and study stem cells obtained from the umbilical cord and umbilical cord membrane was opened. The bank, which received investments from Mekophar (pharmaceutical company) and the Minister of Science and Technology, will use technology developed by CellResearch Corporation in Singapore.
The bank will perform research to improve the quality of the preservation of stem cells and tests for practical applications to treat incurable diseases.

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For patients who suffer a major heart attack, get treatment at the hospital but are left with a damaged heart, Dr. Roger Gammon of the Heart Hospital of Austin is testing a new process to reverse that damage.

Just as a Houston hospital is investigating stem cells to repair the brains of stroke patients (see yesterday’s blog), the Heart Hospital is trying out a new stem cell therapy to fix the hearts of patients who suffered their first attack.
It is one of the nation’s first hospitals to test the new therapy.

Gammon, an interventional cardiologist, is leading the clinical trial in which patients are injected with donated adult stem cells from the bone marrow of others. The stems cells are purified by Osiris Therapeutics, Inc., which markets them as a product called Prochymal. Osiris is financing the research project, which is being done in the gold-standard way: Half of the patients are getting stem cells, and half are getting a placebo (a harmless product that looks the same). The researchers and patients don’t know which patients are getting the stem cells and which one aren’t.

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