Promising Results from an Early Trial of a Stem Cell Heart Patch

Heart patches are one manifestation of the tissue engineering approach to regenerative medicine. Cells delivered to the patient are usually combined with a biodegradable scaffold material that provides support to help the cells survive and undertake beneficial signaling actions. A heart patch is some amount of this combined material applied to the exterior of the heart, in some cases simply by injection since the scaffold can be made to be a viscous fluid. The researchers here claim better results by abandoning the scaffolds, however, and implanting thin sheets of engineered cells. This paper reports on the results of an early human trial: Heart failure, caused primarily by ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM) or dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), is life-threatening even with excellent treatment. We developed a cell-sheet implantation method that can heal severely damaged myocardium through cytokine paracrine effects, as evidenced by several experiments using infarction or DCM models in both large and small animals. Cell-sheet implants are reported to offer better functional recovery than needle-injection methods, mainly by cytokine paracrine effects despite poor cell survival. Based on these findings from preclinical work, we previously conducted a First-in-Man Clinical Trial using cell-sheet implants. In the present study, we introduced cell-sheet implants to treat cardiomyopathy patients in a Phase I clinical trial to determine the safety, feasibility, and potential effectiv...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs