Heart Valve 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.

Heart valve stem cell research.

Stem cells can now be used to correct heart and valve degeneration. In fact says brinker the new cells have a pre determined cardiac fate. Center for regenerative medicine researchers plan to develop biological heart valves using a patient s own cells. Jones 69 first learned about the heart stem cell trial in a convenience store.

Autologous biological heart valves. Scientists thought the heart didn t have its own stem cells until professor antonio beltrami at the university of udine in italy described a small population of stem cells in the heart in 2003. As you can see the use of stem cells to treat heart patients shows great promise. Helping the heart regenerate itself after damage is a dream of cardiovascular researchers.

In the past i have written several stories about stem cell use for heart valve. Currently medical pharmaceutical and device based therapies only delay the progression of the disease and do not actually repair the heart. While many mechanical and biological replacement options exist today each has its drawbacks. That s based partly on recent animal studies in which scientists at both institutions isolated stem cells from the injured animals hearts and infused them back into the hearts of those same animals.

But this is still an extremely young scientific. The stem cells formed new heart muscle and blood vessel cells. 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. Research is ongoing to test cellular therapies to treat heart attacks by combining different types of stem cells repeating transplantations or improving stem cell patches.

Discovery of cardiac stem cells. Clinical trials using these improved methods are currently targeted to begin around 2020. In addition the stem cell group did not report any adverse effects such as immune system reactions. The stem cell patients also showed improved quality of life and day to day functioning.

That said i thought you might find this video very interesting. People with valvular heart disease may require surgery to repair or replace the damaged heart valve. Myocardial infarction is the leading cause of death worldwide.