“Latest Stem Cells News”

MIT engineers have boosted stem cells’ ability to regenerate vascular tissue (such as blood vessels) by equipping them with genes that produce extra growth factors (naturally occurring compounds that stimulate tissue growth). In a study in mice, the researchers found that the stem cells successfully generated blood vessels near the site of an injury, allowing damaged tissue to survive.

Why it matters: Stem cells hold great potential as a way to promote tissue regeneration. However, this approach has been limited because stem cells don’t produce enough growth factors after transplantation. The researchers’ new super-charged stem cells could be used to treat an infarction (death of tissue caused by blockage of the blood supply, by a clot or another obstruction), or to induce blood supply for engineered tissues.

An international team of physicians and scientists in Florida have discovered a way to treat cardiomyopathy (heart disease) with adult stem cells, including a rare metabolic condition otherwise requiring heart transplant.

Regenocyte Therapeutic is using stem cells extracted from patients’ blood to repair damaged heart muscle, regenerate tissue, and create new vessels to improve circulation. According to the organization’s director of Cardiology and Vascular Disease, Zannos G. Grekos, M.D., by applying specific growth factors to the patient’s stem cells  the team creates a new cell population which is educated to target the area of damage or deficiency when placed into the patient’s heart and blood vessels. “We’ve now treated close to 100 patients with their own stem cells and seen an average 22 point increase in ejection fraction (EF) with a significant improvement in heart failure classification – typically from a Class IV to a Class II status in less than 180 days,” Grekos says.

The cardiomyopathy treatment study, the first 6 months of which was published December 2008 in Anti-Aging Medical News, follows patients through one year post-treatment with autologous adult stem cells, also called Angiogenic Cardio-Regenerative Progenitor cells (ACP’s). Regenocyte’s chief medical advisor Athina Kyritsis, M.D. announced that, “Across the board, no adverse effects from treatment were reported by patients and function plus quality of life measurably improved.” Grekos and his team measured patients’ heart function by cardiac nuclear scans, PET scans, and echocardiographs.

A group of British doctors are preparing for human clinical trials that will take a person’s bone marrow stem cells, transform them into heart stem cells and inject them into the heart, where they can go to work repairing damage.

“Placing heart stem cells into the heart to repair has a very good chance of working; because the stem cells are the patient’s own there are no problems with rejection,” said Professor Sian Harding, of Imperial College London.

The British researchers plan to use a technique that was pioneered at the Mayo Clinic. They will remove 40 milliliters of bone marrow from a patient and then grow heart stem cells from them through the use of growth factors. Once injected back into the heart, doctors say they can expect a physical improvement in the patient in as little as two weeks.

In the near future, hearts that have just suffered a heart attack will be able to repair themselves, according to an incredible discovery of how to reeducate cardiac stem cells to repair damaged hearts. In fact, stem cells normally perform the delicate task of repairing cardiac muscle, but after a heart attack the cells no longer carry out this highly important self-repair.

Italian scholars at the ‘Sapienza’ University in Rome and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, have discovered why these cells stop functioning correctly, and now understand how to induce them to repair damage from heart attacks. The announcement was made during the 69th Congress of the Italian Society of Cardiologists in Rome by Professor Antonio Musaro’ of the ‘Sapienza’ University in Rome.

Musaro’ said, “With our studies conducted together with Doctor Nadia Rosenthal of the EMBL we have learned why stem cells present in the heart after damage from a heart attack or trauma, do not correctly function. In fact, instead of producing functional contractile tissue that allows the damage to be ‘repaired’, they stop functioning or even produce non-functional fibrous tissue. This occurs because the heart attack or damage creates an environment that is hostile to normal stem cells activity.”

A research group at Imperial College London has designed a new treatment able to significantly improve the body’s capacity to repair damage caused by a heart attack or bone fracture. The new therapy, described in Cell Stem Cell, ‘fools’ the spinal cord inducing it to ’overproduce’ stem cells which repair damaged tissues in the body. Researchers hope to test the treatment on animals by the end of the year. If testing is successful, the next step will be to experiment on human beings attempting to induce them to use their own stem cells to regenerate damaged or infected organs.