The idea is for patients who have heart attacks in which the heart muscle becomes part of the scar, and challenging the belief that once formed, became a permanent scar tissue is healthy and that, once gone, will disappear forever. To do that, Marbán and his counterparts did a biopsy on small pieces of heart tissue from patients with heart attacks and use it to propagate stem cells in the laboratory. Millions of cardiac stem cells are then injected back into the parts of the heart defects caused by a heart attack.
Marbán explains, "This was done in the heart of the region affected, and the cells were implanted into the coronary artery that is blocked due to previous heart attacks." Marbán report the results of a small study of 25 patients in the online edition of The Lancet. Stem cell therapy can reduce the area of scar tissue in half, from an average of about 24 percent to only 12 percent, as measured by MRI scan one year after treatment.
For comparison, a control group who did not receive stem cell therapy, did not experience a reduction in scarring. However, stem cell therapy does not improve overall cardiac function, although there appears to be increasing in certain areas where new cardiac tissue to grow back. "When we look at the functions of the affected area of heart attack, the area is pumping better and better to contract compared with subjects who did not undergo cell therapy. So, accordingly, this therapy seems to work well, "he said again. Director of Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute Eduardo Marbán acknowledge that this study just test the idea. Further research may be able to find other ways to infuse the stem cells into heart patients, in addition to using stem cells from the heart of the corpse.
If stem cell therapy proved successful, he said the treatment will be available for heart attack patients in about four years.
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