Heart Valve Stem Cell Research

Discovery of cardiac stem cells.

Heart valve stem cell research.

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. Clinical trials using these improved methods are currently targeted to begin around 2020. As you can see the use of stem cells to treat heart patients shows great promise. 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.

That said i thought you might find this video very interesting. Myocardial infarction is the leading cause of death worldwide. The stem cells formed new heart muscle and blood vessel cells. In addition the stem cell group did not report any adverse effects such as immune system reactions.

Currently medical pharmaceutical and device based therapies only delay the progression of the disease and do not actually repair the heart. 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. In the past i have written several stories about stem cell use for heart valve. He was buying diet soda when he saw a newspaper headline about the proposed research.

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. Autologous biological heart valves. But this is still an extremely young scientific. 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.

Stem cells can now be used to correct heart and valve degeneration. The stem cell patients also showed improved quality of life and day to day functioning. People with valvular heart disease may require surgery to repair or replace the damaged heart valve. Helping the heart regenerate itself after damage is a dream of cardiovascular researchers.

Jones 69 first learned about the heart stem cell trial in a convenience store. Center for regenerative medicine researchers plan to develop biological heart valves using a patient s own cells. 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.