A new study finds that stem cells can be used to treat heart attacks and cardiomyopathy.
According to Professor Michael Schneider, British Heart Foundation Professor at Imperial College London, the use of stem cells in clinical trials to treat heart damage is very successful when it comes to safety but the bone marrow stem cells only gives a small improvement in how well the heart is pumping.
Schneider said that they are want to use stem cells to improve the heart beat of their patients but these kind of cells are not found in the bone marrow. He also stated good news that they are already finding ways to identify and purify these cells that can be a big help for their study.
According to reports, almost 1000 patients have been successfully treated in 20 clinical trials worldwide. Bone marrow stem cells are used to repair the damage caused by heart attacks and diseases. Schneider said that there is a significant way to produce beating heart cells from stem cells. Using embryonic stem cells like induced pluripotent cells and heart-derived stem cells are the best proven approaches to create new beating heart cells.
Schneider added that using heart-derived stem cells is safer than using embryonic and induced pluripotent cells in treating cardiomyopathy and heart attack. He also said that of all the cell types, only heart-derived cells are used in human clinical trials for these kinds of treatments. According to Schneider, the biggest challenge will be the development of an ideal product which will be either a pure population of some kind of precursor or a mixture of blood-vessel forming cells and heart-muscle forming cells.
According to the scientists, the next stage of this study is to develop this technique into a method of purifying, extracting and multiplying heart stem cells to repair the damage caused by heart attacks and cardiomyopathy.