heart valves

Scientists forecasts use of stem cells to grow parts

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:59:59 -0400

UK cell biologist Robert Edwards says he can see a time in the not-too-distant future when humans will be able to grow new body parts through the use of stem cell technology. And the doctor, acclaimed for the pioneering breakthrough allowing women to give birth to "test tube babies," is thinking beyond new hearts, livers, kidneys and other organs already in development. He notes that humans have the genes necessary to re-grow lost limbs.

Edwards and a colleague were responsible for the first in vitro fertilization birth--a woman named Louise Brown who turns 30 next month. And even at that time, says Edwards, scientists were able to see that we would make significant strides over the next 30 years. The big obstacle has been a lack of funds, notes Edwards, but now money is flowing into stem cell research at a furious pace, fueling advancements in the field.

- read the story in The Times

Tissue regeneration a success with new heart

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:59:59 -0500

Science has taken another big step in the direction of building new body organs from stem cells. A team of scientists at the University of Minnesota report that they constructed a new rat heart, injecting cells from newborn rodents onto a scaffold of valves that were left intact after dead heart cells were removed. The heart took shape and began pumping some blood. In theory, the same approach--intensely refined--could be used in about a decade to create new human hearts by using bone marrow stem cells seeded onto heart valves.

Team-leader Dr. Doris A. Taylor told The New York Times that the project clearly demonstrates how doctors in the not-too-distant future will be able to create any new organ that's needed, including livers, lungs and kidneys. That's the holy grail of tissue regeneration, which has made a series of stunning advancements in recent years.

"The next goal will be to see if we can get the heart to pump strongly enough and become mature enough that we can use it to keep an animal alive" in a replacement transplant, Dr. Taylor told The New York Times.

- see this release
- read the article in The New York Times

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ESC 'patch' could heal heart attack damage

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:59:59 -0500

Scientists at London's Imperial College have developed a patch made from embryonic stem cells to repair damaged hearts. The team matured human heart cells in a lab dish and then created a patch out of biomaterials. They believe that by stitching or attaching the patch to a heart damaged during a heart attack, they can repair the heart muscle where oxygen deprived cells have died. The biomaterial is made to degrade quickly, with the patch preventing the familiar bulge of scarred tissue. "We really would like to cover the area of the infarct scar as much as possible, so it might be quite a large patch," Dr. Sian Harding said.

The team's next step will be to test the procedure on animals, with human trials underway in about five years. The scientists say they are also closely following the development of stem cells from skin tissue, which would dissolve much of the controversy that dogs embryonic stem cell work.

- check out the report from Heartzine

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NIH doles out $438M for daring research

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:59:59 -0400

The NIH is opening its purse to fund $438 million in new research projects that have the potential to make groundbreaking progress against some of the world's toughest medical challenges. Dr. Alan Krensky, director of the NIH office of portfolio analysis and strategic initiatives, told the Boston Globe that they were bankrolling "knock-your-socks-off" science projects. Nine teams will each get $21 million to $25 million to tackle such projects as growing new heart valves and revolutionizing the drug discovery process with swift advancements in genomics. NIH is shucking its standard operating procedure of offering individual researchers six-figure grants, budgeting a small portion of its money for these big-picture research projects that could offer major advancements in medicine. The new strategy is being developed at a time of growing concern that the NIH is not able to fund all the projects deserving of federal support.

- check out the report from The Boston Globe

ALSO: A team of researchers at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine and the M.I.N.D. Institute, in collaboration with four allied institutions, has been awarded a five-year, $21.8 million Interdisciplinary Research Consortium grant from the National Institutes of Heath, the largest single federal award to date in support of research related to the Fragile X (FMR1) gene. Release

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Adult stem cells key to ventricle transplants

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 06:59:59 -0400

Prominent British cardiac surgeon Magdi Yacoub says that he believes that scientists will quickly perfect the use of adult stem cells for growing a complete new ventricle for transplant, with human trials coming in three to five years. A researcher at Heart Science Centre at Harefield hospital, Middlesex, Yacoub has written an article that outlines the ongoing research that is paving the way to a day when complete new hearts can be grown from stem cells extracted from a patient. The first stage of that process will be seen as researchers grow new heart valves for procedures involving 80,000 patients a year. Today valve replacements are either mechanical or come from pigs, but both are short-term options.

- read the article from The Independent

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Patch to replace heart transplants?

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:59:59 -0400

Children's Hospital Boston has also been the center of new cardiovascular research. Another team there developed a patch that dispatches the growth stimulating protein periostin to damaged areas of heart muscle, spurring the growth of new tissue. Three months after insertion, the patch was still generating new protein while rats with induced heart attack damage had smaller injury areas and more blood vessels at work repairing damage. The researchers could also point to six million new cells, which outnumbered the cells destroyed by the heart attack. That same patch could be used to repair damaged hearts in adults or the hearts of children suffering from congenital cardiac issues. Researchers believe that this approach could eventually obviate the need for heart transplants.

- read the UPI report on the research

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Adult stem cell therapy begins human trial

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 19:01:39 -0500

For the first time in humans a doctor has extracted adult stem cells from fat tissue and injected them directly into the heart as a therapy for angina and heart disease. Physicians in Spain--working with investigators at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston--say that it will be at least six months before they can determine if the therapy is working. Another 35 volunteers suffering from chronic myocardial ischemia, a severe form of end-stage coronary artery disease, will be given the therapy developed by Cytori Therapeutics. In preclinical tests the therapy spurred improved circulation in the heart.

"Patients with chronic heart disease today have few options making this an important milestone for the affected patients and doctors that treat them," said Marc H. Hedrick, M.D., president for Cytori Therapeutics. "This study is designed to show unequivocally whether the cells from our Celution System can be safely introduced into the heart."

- see the release on the trial

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Heart muscle created from embryonic stem cells

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:01:39 -0500

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a heart muscle using embryonic stem cells. The work illustrates how new heart tissue could be developed to replace tissue damaged by a heart attack. Researchers have been working on finding ways to repair damaged hearts, and building replacement tissue may be the most effective approach. The scientists note that because the heart muscle is threaded with blood vessels, it would have a good chance of being transplanted successfully.

The research team created the heart muscle by seeding a plastic frame with heart muscle and blood vessel cells combined with embryonic fibroblasts. Days later patches of the heart muscle began to contract like a normal heart. Now the researchers plan to begin to transplant the tissue into animals to see how they respond to the procedure. And they also plan to see how the approach works for growing tissue for other organs, such as livers.

- here's the release on their work

ALSO: The high-flying Sir Richard Branson is creating a new bank to store umbilical blood from newborns. The blood teems with haematopoietic stem cells that are used in embryonic stem cell research and are expected to be the building blocks of future cures. Report

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Scientists grow new heart valves from stem cells

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:01:39 -0500

Scientists at the University of Zurich have used stem cells obtained from fetal fluid to grow new heart valves for repairing damaged hearts. The work builds on new research into growing bladders and blood vessels from stem cells as researchers find more effective ways to mend or replace damaged body parts. By using stem cells drawn from the patient, researchers say they will eventually be able to provide new body parts that will be far superior to transplants. These parts will be able to grow with the body. About one in every hundred newborns have heart damage, making it a leading killer of babies in the United States. Theoretically the amniotic stem cells can also be frozen and stored for later use, when aging patients will need to replace deteriorating body parts.

- check out this report on the stem cell work from the Seattle Times

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