Heart Valve Stem Cell Research

Discovery of cardiac stem cells.

Heart valve stem cell research.

Jones 69 first learned about the heart stem cell trial in a convenience store. While many mechanical and biological replacement options exist today each has its drawbacks. 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. Myocardial infarction is the leading cause of death worldwide.

As you can see the use of stem cells to treat heart patients shows great promise. 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. Autologous biological heart valves. 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. But this is still an extremely young scientific. The stem cells formed new heart muscle and blood vessel cells. Currently medical pharmaceutical and device based therapies only delay the progression of the disease and do not actually repair the heart.

Center for regenerative medicine researchers plan to develop biological heart valves using a patient s own cells. That said i thought you might find this video very interesting. 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. Helping the heart regenerate itself after damage is a dream of cardiovascular researchers.

Several research teams around the country are exploring different ways of harnessing stem cells which have the ability to form many types of specialized cells to mend broken hearts. 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. In the past i have written several stories about stem cell use for heart valve. People with valvular heart disease may require surgery to repair or replace the damaged heart valve.

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. Clinical trials using these improved methods are currently targeted to begin around 2020. Considering my fascination with medical technology i recently came across an interesting video about the use of stem cells to create heart valve replacements for the treatment of valvular disorders including aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation.